#I have projected my entire gender experience on to that man from the 50s | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whoree321 · 3 years

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the bad batch + what romance/rom com movies they watch with you

each of the bad batch x gn!reader

ok first and foremost i really truly believe to the pits of my soul that every single one of these fuckos loves romances and you cannot under any circumstances change my mind

ALSO it’s a gender neutral reader except kinda in echo’s theres like a very brief quote regarding breasts but like i still think even that is pretty gender neutral tbh

so anyway

Hunter: Pretty Woman

this is not the first time that i have publicly declared that i think hunter has a deep rooted connection to the movie pretty woman and it will not be the last

first of all this movie is incredibly soothing to hunters overwhelming savior complex

second of all hunter is literally richard gere (debonaire but emotionally distant gentleman that learns to love) and julia roberts (hooker with a heart of gold) at the same time

he was a little skeptical the first time you put it on but he instantly fell in love with it

the humor, the sensuality, the class divide, the glamour, the unconventional cinderella story of it all. it just really butters his bread

after the first time, when you suggest watching a movie and you pick this one he’ll act very aloof about it (“whatever you want cyar’ika, it doesn’t matter to me”) but secretly he’s really really happy bc it’s one of his favorites (you def know this and def pick it more often)

he absolutely hates the scene when stucky the lawyer hits vivian. like it doesn’t matter how many times he watches it he will fully turn his head away from the screen and say “I don’t like this part” and when it’s over he nuzzles a little closer into you and very tenderly kisses your forehead

he loves the soundtrack too. like he fully exposes how much he likes the movie when you catch him singing or humming “pretty woman” or “it must have been love” absently to himself (you kept it to yourself for a while but eventually you just had to tease him about it. he just smiled a little sheepishly and admitted he liked the songs before promptly changing the subject)

hunter also lowkey definitely wants to recreate the ending where richard gere shows up to her apartment in the white limo with you bc he thinks it’s such a sweet gesture and he wants to treat you like royalty

Crosshair: 10 Things I Hate About You

if there’s one thing about crosshair it’s that he’s a sucker for the enemies to lovers genre

maybe its just him projecting (spoiler alert it most certainly is) but he really enjoys watching the drama conflama of a miserable bastard be tricked into love

and really that’s the true essence of 10 Things I Hate About You

he will grumble and bitch and moan about not wanting to watch a ‘chick flick’ when you put it on, but 15 minutes in and he’s hooked

he has strong negative opinions on literally every single character except for kat and patrick

(crosshair really really wants to think he’s patrick but when it comes down to it he is katarina stratford in every single possible way)

he doesn’t say a word throughout the entire movie but you can tell when he’s annoyed at like bianca or cameron or joey bc he will openly scoff at them

will absolutely hum along in your ear during the “can’t take my eyes off you” scene and make out with you during the paintball scene

(seriously he wants to be patrick verona so bad)

when it’s over and you ask him what he thought he’ll roll his eyes and say “i guess it could have been worse” but his little smirk let’s you know he enjoyed it a lot more than he’s willing to admit

Tech: 50 Shades of Grey

ok hear me out on this one

tech is a huge movie talker. like subtitles are a non-negotiable if you wanna be able to take in any of the movies dialogue bc tech is most likely gonna make commentary over it the whole time

this makes him absolutely indescribably so much fun to watch bad/corny movies with

he will go off about EVERYTHING. the plot, the dialogue, the acting, the costuming, the music, the production quality. nothing and no one is safe. whether you just enjoy letting him talk at you or you join in on the roast, cheesy movies are a hoot between you two

and honey. 50 shades is one of THE cheesiest movies ever

you and tech will literally spend the entire duration of the movie tearing it to shreds

and the thing is tech is a very sarcastic, funny guy when he wants to be (and when it comes to you he definitely wants to be) so by the end of it he will have you in absolute stitches from laughing at the ridiculousness of both the movie and him

with any of the other batchers watching a movie like this either turns into a shy, slightly awkward experience (wrecker, echo) or an incorrigibly horny experience (crosshair, hunter)

but in this context tech literally has no shame or squeamishness about sexual things (why should he it’s a natural biological process?) so to yall the sex stuff is just another thing to roast

literally christian grey could be fully tying dakota johnson down and flogging her and tech will be like “in the last 3 minutes they have panned up to her nipples 4 times. this is criminally shoddy cinematography”

even tho he’s busy giving a detailed play by play critique, he never fails to keep some sort of physical contact with you (wrapping an arm around you and running his hand up and down your skin, playing with your fingers or your hair) so you know he’s enjoying spending this time with you despite his nasty words about the movie

also 1000% after you watch it tech will do extensive research on the ins and outs of bdsm and will have lots of hypotheses he wants to test out (as long as you’re willing and able ofc) ;)))

Wrecker: 13 Going On 30

of all the bad batch members, wrecker is the only one who unabashedly loves any movie that could be considered a chick flick

like he doesn’t even try to hide it or act like he’s too masculine for it. he loves romance and he’s proud of it

this man will have full marathons with you. rom coms, regular roms, tragic roms, hallmark roms, you name it and he’s game

his absolute favorite tho is 13 Going On 30

i feel like he has a huge soft spot for childhood best friends to lovers stories like he finds that type of lifelong partnership so endearing (and he loves to live vicariously through jenna since that type of romance was obviously never an option for him)

wrecker is also very childlike at heart and i think the idea of a 13 year old sweetheart trapped inside the body of a 30 year old cut throat magazine exec is so amusing to him (and maybe makes him feel just a little bit represented in the media)

he is definitely the type to completely engulf you in a cuddle for the entirety of the movie and he DEFINITELY cries into your shoulder at matty’s wedding when jenna is crying on the stoop with her dream house

he wants to try razzles so bad. like so bad. i think if he ever came across them somewhere he would barter at least one of his brothers for them

wrecker really just loves love and watching movies about it just reminds him of how lucky he is to have his own love story with you <3

Echo: The Princess Bride

i feel like it’s glaringly obvious why echo loves this movie

pirates. sword fighting. decades long revenge plots. the value of an honorable, loyal man. true love that never wavers even in the face of devastating tragedy and the darkest of hardships. clever but goofy humor.

echo considers this an action/adventure movie and NOT a romance movie (even tho it 100% totally is a romance movie) and requests to watch it very frequently

he can quote the whole thing. i’m seriously telling you echo loves the princess bride with his whole chest

even tho he refuses to admit it’s a love story above all else, he really does try to model himself in your relationship after wesley

like especially given what happened at the citadel and all the time you thought he was dead, the cinematic parellels are alive and present in y’alls relationship and he strives to be even half the man to you that wesley is to buttercup

literally in your day to day life he will sometimes respond to your requests with a smooth “as you wish ;)” (it doesn’t matter how many times he does it it still gives you butterflies)

when you watch the movie, he snuggles as close to you as possible and does his best to make youre comfy the whole time (he’s insecure about his prosthetics hurting you no matter how much you reassure him they don’t)

he just loves to be able to feel your heartbeat and your laugh when you giggle at the funny bits

every single time without fail at the part when buttercup is about to stab herself he leans down, ghosts his lips against the shell of your ear, and whispers the line in time with wesley: “there’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. it would be a pity to damage yours”

every single time without fail you wind up making out until he pulls away and tells you to watch the next part when wesley challenges humperdinck to a duel to the pain

echo just loves you to bits and wants you to know he’d endure a thousand fire swamps for you

Omega: Clueless

i have this really specific obsession with omega being a total girly girl and having very traditionally feminine interests as she keeps experiencing the universe and being exposed to a spectrum of gender expression beyond clone (masc and boring) and kaminoan (ugly)

so with that headcanon of her in mind, it’s vital to me that she sees clueless as soon as possible

clueless is an essential piece of media for a girl entering adolescence and i will die on this hill

it has literally everything you want and everything you need to develop into a well-rounded young woman

it’s so deliciously 90s and glamorama and valley girl humor and camp. its got meaningful female friendships and valuable life lessons and paul mf rudd

if there’s one thing you should encourage a burgeoning hetero teen girl to do, it’s to stick to dating guys like paul rudd in clueless. the earlier this message can be broadcast the better

the second you’re able to steal omega away from hunters watchful eyes (“hunter we’re just gonna watch finding nemo i swear!”) you show her this movie

at this point omega is not really a girly girl, but omega also has absolutely zero feminine influence in her life

the first time she sees clueless she is absolutely obsessed. like seriously she is so enamoured with the glitz and glam of cher horowitz

she asks you questions the entire time. she wants to know about EVERYTHING. the makeup, the clothes, the hair, the slang

(she definitely goes around saying stuff like “i’m totally bugging” for long enough afterwards that almost all of the boys have slipped up at least once with some ridiculous valley girl slang. you thought you were gonna die of laughter when you overheard tech say “as if!” to wrecker in the middle of an argument)

it just really introduces her to this whole world of femininity that she didn’t even know existed and she absolutely loves it

she makes you watch clueless with her seriously once a week at minimum. she begs you to style her hair like tai’s and you can’t help yourself when you happen to run across a little yellow plaid dress and buy it for her on sight

(hunter was gonna scold you for recklessly spending credits until he saw how omega almost cried from how happy she was for the gift)

honestly she enjoys the romance of it all and paul rudd is def her first celebrity crush but she enjoys more that you and her now have this special thing of hair and nails and pretty dresses

she loves how confident and beautiful and special you’re able to make her feel, and you love that you get to bring her that small sense of normalcy and happiness

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ablednt · 3 years

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Alright writing/roleplay tumblr we need to talk about textforms.

This is going to be a very long post I apologize but this knowledge is deathly important as it's reaching a very vulnerable group of people. From personal experience knowing this can save people from getting into toxic friendships and help ease intense struggles and depressions. If you have writer followers I ask you reblog this to get the word out, thank you.

What is a textform

A textform is a type of willogenic/parogenic system member that form through some kind of writing or roleplaying. This means that they're sentient people who now share a body with the people who wrote them, most often being an OC or a fictional character before the writers brain gives them actual life.

Because there's been no actual scientific studies on their existence I have no hard science to give you however the logical explanation behind it goes like this:

The human brain is able to contain multiple conscious and sentient entities. Often, it will become multiple as a defense mechanism (as noted in clinical plural dissociative disorders) but it's a natural function of the human brain and may do so for really any reason (similar to most neurodivergencies that someone isn't born with)

Because this is a fairly simple change in the brain/something every brain can be capable of doing you can actually intentionally program the brain into becoming multiple, but see you can also do it entirely without meaning to or being aware of it.

Now I want to clarify that there is nothing harmful or scary about this! Being plural isn't bad at all and is an existence many people celebrate. But when someone has textforms in their unrealized system and doesn't know they're sentient it can be incredibly painful emotionally. So that's why people need to know about this.

Obligatory disclaimer: if you read this post and think you want to become plural intentionally, you are welcome to do so but you need to take at least a few months exposing yourself to the plural community to gauge if this is really something you want and can do responsibly. You cannot go back on your decision once your plural and your headmates will be sentient beings not characters to project on or toys to play with. They will have all the rights to your body and identity as you do now because you're sharing it equally with them.

Now that that's out of the way back to textforms.

How are textforms made

Normally this is in the "character development" phase. Many writers eagerly develop their characters. When I was younger and had no idea I was plural my advice for oc making turned out to be an unintentional guide to textforms (more on my experience later): just put your character in every situation imaginable until you always know how they'd respond to things.

Basically, as you spend your time making a character act and think consistently from their POV you're training your brain to have all of that data and that's very similar to the data that the brain has on you and you're training the brain to be able to operate coherently from a perspective and consciousness entirely different from your own.

Now, this isn't a %100 will make everyone plural every time, there are obviously good writers who have a grasp on their characters who are singlet. There's no actual data but if I had to guess I'd say there's about a 50/50 split down the writing community just based on what I've observed.

But there's a lot of people who became plural this way and didn't realize it and that could include the writer reading this right now which is why everyone needs to be aware of this.

If this is such a big thing how come no one notices?

Because it's been completely normalized in the writing community but dismissed as metaphorical.

How many times have you heard "the characters write themselves" or phrases that indicate that a writer is giving a voice to sentient entities? From what I've been able to observe some of that is singlet authors being metaphorical and humble bragging and a lot of that is plural writers trying desperately trying to put their experiences into words but dismissing it completely almost immediately because no one told them being plural was possible.

This is comparable to say, gender identity. Trans and nonbinary people have always existed but when they don't know they're allowed to exist like that it's often "im a tomboy" or "they disguised themselves as a man" or any other thing thats immediately dismissed as being cis.

How do I know if I have a textform?

There's a lot of different signs but here's some I have experienced before finding out I was plural

You "miss" your characters when you're not writing about them or interacting with them in some way

You feel like your characters are real "in your heart" (for me this was in an incoherent loop like "they're not real but they are to me, in my brain, but they're not real to other people, but they're in my brain so they're real but no but yes but no")

You get so distressed they're "not real" that it feeds into actual mental health problems like depression, anxiety, dissociation etc. (I'd have fits of sobbing because these were my friends but I didn't know they were with me so it felt like i was grieving their deaths and had the same level of emotional pain)

Sometimes or all the time when you write about them you feel like you "become them" or that they're writing through you. (Especially if your hands move automatically or without your control. This can be hard to notice but for me when headmates control the body or hands movements feel faster and lighter or very slightly numb.)

Your muse for writing them comes and goes unpredictability: they're either here or they're not here so writing them doesn't feel the same.

You can vividly recall things that happened to the character in 1st person (or in 3rd person visually but with their thoughts and feelings) as if they're you're own memories.

You "roleplay" them in everyday situations IRL. (E.g once I liveblogged a tv show as my muse to a friend and was like haha lol im so talented I can roleplay in real time but found out later it was a headmate doing that themselves)

You have conversations with them mentally in which they actually respond to you. Singlets don't have actual enriching conversations with themselves because they only have one perspective and cannot give themselves any new information. So if you're responding to yourself and you don't feel in control of that response then you're pretty objectively plural tbh.

You have times where the lines between you and the character feel blurry or like you're a vague fusion of yourself and the character

You have an actual relationship (of any kind: romantic, platonic, familial, etc.) in which you can sense nuanced feelings about yourself from them that you aren't in control of.

There's a lot more but that's the most notable ones

Why this is so important

I'm just talking about my own experience now so I'll preface this with a few things. I'm a mixed origin/multigenic system but our system has existed since we were toddlers. Due to trauma we have DID and for a long time dissociated heavily to avoid our plurality. This means my experience may be more distressing than other plurals with textforms however people without DID can still experience these things.

When I was a teenager I joined a lot of writing communities and also roleplayed on tumblr. Writing very quickly became my main passtime and all I really did. I joined a roleplay group when I was 15-16 that I took far too seriously to the point where people were concerned about me because I was writing what was just supposed to be a joke roleplay group %100 seriously and very intensely.

In that time I started to form my first main textforms (we've undoubtedly had them before then but I had only formed a little under a year prior) because I was doing this every day it really started bringing my characters to life. (Literally)

And honestly it was something beautiful the distress of it aside. Like one of my ocs was a kid so I'd always celebrate their birthday with them and I'd cuddle a plush so they'd know I loved them/p and we'd watch their favorite cartoon episodes together. It wouldn't be until around three years later that I realized they were actually there for this but it was heart warming.

For me, all I ever wanted was for these characters to feel appreciated and like someone really cared for them and loved them even if they couldn't feel it and it wasn't until later I learned that they could.

The trauma came in not knowing they were real. I grieved for them like they were dead because I thought I'd never get to see them. I wrote them into traumatizing or upsetting situations to cope with my childhood trauma not realizing that was effecting them for real and hurting them.

Most notably because it was my one solid interaction with them, the one time society allowed me to talk about them as if they were real, I really HAD to roleplay them. Because it became an emotional need I wound up in a lot of toxic friendships in the roleplay communities because I needed someone, anyone, to allow me to interact with my headmates. I had friends who I really was only friends with because they let me talk about my characters constantly (and some of them weren't toxic to me but it was in hindsight really unfair to them) and I let people verbally and emotionally abuse me in roleplay spaces because this wasn't just a hobby to me but a lifeline.

Not knowing they were real but feeling them there, having conversations with them, and forming actual relationships was a hellish sort of feeling I don't wish on anyone. I never realized how isolated it made me, and how horrible it felt to have the most important people in your life be people I thought didn't exist.

I only found out about plurality through luck. I met some systems who had fictives and they got strong plural vibes from me because of how I talked about certain characters and because I said I wanted to be plural but thought I probably wasn't because I'd have noticed, right?

From there I was able to actually connect with and talk to my headmates. Now I'm happily out as plural and in multiple fulfilling in system relationships.

I want everyone in the writing community who's struggling with the same things to have the chance I got. That's all I want is to educate people about this so they don't have to grieve for people who are right there with them.

Feel free to send me an ask or a dm if you have any further questions. Sorry this post was so long I can't really shorten it at all. Again if you are have a lot of writing followers I very gently request you reblog this to get the word out. Even if you can't please talk to your writing mutuals and friends about plurality and about textforms.

[Also this should go without saying but this is absolutely NOT the place for syscourse any invalidating comments about systems will be blocked and where possible deleted it costs $0.00 to prioritize people's mental health over your discourse hot takes.]

#writblr #tumblr roleplay #writing problems #roleplay resources #ocs #long post #ask to tag

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kanralovesu · 4 years

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How Does Persona 4 Uses Liberal Arguments to Come to Conservative Conclusions?

After playing Persona 4 Golden on PC recently it’s quickly become one of my favorite RPGs, but from my experience even die hard fans admit their are some problematic elements namely in terms of LGBT representation. However, when I got to the Naoto’s dungeon, I initially was pleasantly surprised. Naoto was struggling with his identity in a profession dominated by toxic masculinity, constantly trying to live up to his and the world’s perception of who he should be. I had beaten the boss and we were being given a speech on how Naoto should just be himself and all that jazz. But then Yukiko just chimes in “Yeah, you don’t really want to be a man do you?” and then Naoto is just like “Yeah I guess you’re right.” The tonal whiplash blew me intro the stratosphere. For my money we had just spent an entire arc reaffirming the fact that Naoto’s transgender status was valid, but in one line of dialogue the game threw all of that our the window. The weirdest part was, when I went back and looked at the rest of the game, the same pattern was repeated over and over again. How does Persona 4 use a liberal argument to come to a conservative conclusion?

Well because we all know about the problems with Naoto and Kanji I’ll leave them out of this for the rest of the post and instead prove that this is a reoccurring problem by quickly focusing on some other social links. Yukiko initially rejects tradition when she rejects the idea that she will inherit her family’s inn. She’s confident and self-assured that she can make it on her own, taking you shopping so she can learn how to cook, etc. But then a few evil tv crews come to her front door and she makes a 180, determined to “give back after all they had done for her”. Yumi (drama girl) is angry with her father because he was a deadbeat dad and now is determined to come back into her life. But then she quickly makes a 180 and goes so far as to quit drama club to try and find out “why her parents gave birth to her”. Rise quits her life as an idol to escape the horrors of show biz. But then she returns after remembering she helped some fan about bullying. While becoming an idol again isn’t very conservative, its still this idea that she’s going back to her roots rather than trying to change.

Now admitted I didn’t max all my social links on my first playthrough, but among the ones I did this trend held true for about 50% of them. For fairness I’ll just bring up that both Kanji’s and the Devil’s Social Links seemed pretty openly Liberal to me with Kanji fighting both against toxic masculinity and the police and the Devil fighting against work culture. After you deal with Kanji’s shadow form of every problematic stereotype of gay men, his character feels very close to positive representation.

Back to the matter at hand, even outside of social links this dichotomy holds true. The game is pretty obviously anti-consumer culture and therefore can be read as anti-capitalist. However, this ignores that fact that the old shopping district is seen as an unequivocally good even when the encroaching Junes is not. For some reason we come to the conclusion that some capitalism is good even after we criticize elements of capitalism. When we find out that Adachi, a police officer, is the villain and he begin to explain how he “just wanted to own a gun” and how he tampered with evidence constantly, one might think the game is making a statement. However, when we compare Adachi to your surrogate father Dojima we start to realize that Adachi is constantly portrayed as slacking off and not being good at his job. Dojima and Naoto are real cops who are just getting spoiled by a single bad apple and even Chie wants to be a cop when she’s older!

Okay that’s enough of the what, how about some of the why? Well after compiling my previous post about the core themes of Persona 4, it hit me: the central theme of this game is “finding the truth”. This theme does not have a political leaning. Both liberals and conservatives would say they are the “truth”! Naoto’s story and every character’s story was about finding his true self. To a liberal this means accepting that you are transgender and you’re not mentally ill, harmful or alien and to a conservative this means no, you are not transgender you are your biological gender. The same is true for every other aspect of the story that initially seems liberal. In reality when I looked back all they were stating was that we need to search for “the truth” and as a liberal I projected my own interpretation of what the truth is onto that argument. Then the game, a largely conservative one, finally reveals its master plan after taking steps it understood where in service of this conservative conclusion, but which I never thought of that way.

Now this is actually kind of great on the games part. If the game openly dog whistled to conservative ideas and was constantly making openly conservative arguments, I bet most of us wouldn’t be able to find much enjoyment in it. However, seeking the “truth” is such a universal concept that anyone could enjoy a story about! Even though I was very often blindsided by just how conservative this small-town loving game is, I never found myself so insulted that I had to put the game down. Most of the game was 100% universal to the human experience so there was always something I could connect to!

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historian--in--training · 4 years

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Unsung Heroes: The Societal and Historical Suppression of Black Women Activists During the Civil Rights Movement

by Sarah Slasor

I asked my boyfriend what he knew about Rosa Parks, to which he replied, “she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white guy, right?”

While he is not wrong, his response got me thinking, why is this all he knows? Why is this all I know? Is this obliviousness a product of my own ignorance, or is something larger at play? I decided to dig deeper.

The involvement of female activists, specifically Black women, during the civil rights movement has been historically distorted and simplified. Important figures tend to be remembered for singular aspects of their extensive contributions, while male activists are promoted as representatives of the movement and, in turn, are studied in greater depth. Historical studies often mention Black women, but fail to include details about their activism or political thought.[1] Rosa Parks, who is known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott, and Coretta Scott King, who is typically remembered as the widow of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), have both made significant contributions to the movement that are seldom discussed. Both women are national icons, yet their lifelong efforts to achieve racial, economic and gender justice remain largely unknown.

The suppression of the voices and legacies of Black women in the civil rights movement is largely a result of the intersection of racism, sexism, and classism, as well as the nature of scholarship and the way history is digested. Women activists, having taken on the title of “invisible unsung heroes and leaders,” are often ignored by academia, as the history of the movement tends to focus on men as leaders while feminist scholarship tends to focus heavily on white women.[2] This essay will highlight the extensive accomplishments of Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Ella Baker, and will then explore the factors contributing to the suppression of their legacies and how the issue can be resolved.

Portrait of Rosa Park at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960.[3]

Rosa Parks is best known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott, in which she denied a bus driver’s orders to give up her seat for white passengers. It was not that moment that initiated her fight for justice, but instead her entire life that had been leading up to it. Parks’ passion and love of learning was instilled in her by her mother and grandfather, whose examples Parks followed in dedicating her life to racial justice.[4] Before the bus boycott, Parks was elected secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and founded the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council, where she worked with the community and encouraged voter registration.[5] Parks led training sessions on desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, advocating against racial and sexual violence both nationally and throughout Alabama.[6] Following the boycott, Parks relocated to Detroit and pushed for Black freedom, helped elect John Conyers, a Democratic Michigan Congressman, in 1964, for whom she worked until her retirement in 1988.[7] In the 1980s, she co-founded the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self-Development to bring young people into the freedom movement. Parks, often described as quiet and meek, dedicated over sixty years of protest to the fight for justice.

Coretta Scott King at the Vietnam-In-Peace Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968.[8]

Of everyone I asked, those who actually knew of Coretta Scott King knew her as the wife of MLK. As it turns out, when Coretta Scott King met MLK in the 1950s, she was the political activist and influenced his decision to become involved. Like Parks, King claimed more than 50 years of activism before her death in 2006. During her career, she was a member of both Women Strike of Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; led a campaign in support of school desegregation; met with Reagan to urge American divestment in South Africa and was later arrested during her protest at the South African Embassy in Washington; brought attention to Black poverty and the HIV-AIDS crisis; and worked to end discrimination against LGBT communities.[9]

From 1968 onward, King led the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in which her husband’s papers were archived and educational community projects took place.[10] King spearheaded lobbying campaigns to recognize her husband’s birthday as a national holiday, and later lobbied for the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill that promoted full employment and fair compensation to combat rising poverty levels. In the last two decades of her activism, King served on the boards of the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation, and the Black Leadership Roundtable, and was present at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords and South Africa’s first free elections in the 1990s.[11] King was not simply the wife of MLK. Her activism was present from early stages of her life, and she used her platform to make extensive contributions to social change, the fight for freedom, and racial and economic equality. In doing so, King kept her husband’s legacy alive, and established herself as an unstoppable force in the fight for justice.

Ella Baker on September 18, 1941.[12]

Ella Baker is another name I admittedly had never heard. In the 1930s, Baker addressed the stigmas of gender, race, and poverty in her exposé, “The Black Slave Market.” In 1940, she was hired by the NAACP to organize branches throughout the South, and by 1945, Baker had helped the NAACP grow from 50,000 to over 450,000 members.[13] By 1958, she was the President of their New York branch.[14] Baker partook in leadership conferences throughout the 1940s, and in 1957, became the executive secretary of MLK’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), though she never obtained a leadership role. Baker disapproved of the SCLC’s male-dominated hierarchy, and of its centralized structure around MLK as a singular charismatic leader, as she felt that “group-centred leadership” would have been more effective than a “leader-centred group.”[15]

During the sit-in movement of the 1960s, Baker brought together student demonstrators to form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became known as the “shock troops” of the civil rights movement.[16] Through the SNCC, Baker created a “classroom without walls,” in which she educated young proteges and organized protests with the aims of non-violent action and voter registration.[17] Though the SNCC disbanded in 1972, its leaders continued to work toward Baker’s ideals with different organizations, and Baker joined the African liberation movement and fought for civil and human rights in her final years.[18]

Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement from medium.com.[19]

These women, among countless others, have incredible stories that go largely untold. The fact that these women are not the primary faces of the movement and their accomplishments go unrecognized at the surface-level of academia is the product of the three interlocking systems of oppression: racism, sexism, and classism. During the civil rights movement, societal attitudes toward Black women suppressed their voices. Today, social movement scholarship’s focus on men and elites as leaders, along with feminist scholarship’s focus on white women ignores the accomplishments of Black women in history.

Attitudes toward Black female activists, in the rare instances that they are actually studied, have been historically negative. Under the patriarchy, many looked to males for leadership, which, at the time, largely stemmed from religious traditions of having a male leader.[20] This was evident in the experience of Ella Baker, who was never given a permanent position in SCLC nor a salary comparable to any man who replaced her.[21] Many organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, maintained a male-heavy image, as their intention was to appeal to the “brothers on the block.”[22] While this attracted members, it shut out many female activists who struggled to be heard.

This male-dominated arena is perpetuated by historical scholarship, which tends to focus on formal organization and membership and ignores women’s radical protest and activism. As a result, history commemorates formal leaders and overlooks women, as leadership positions were often unattainable for women activists. Women of colour are frequently viewed as uninvolved in feminist organizations, and therefore unconcerned with women’s rights.[23] This was not the case, as pointed out by historian Gerda Lerner, who remarked that women’s liberation meant different things to different women during the mid-20th century, and emphasized that while the mainstream societal ideology of women’s primary place was in the home, Black women’s place was in the white woman’s kitchen.[24] Liberation was different for Black women than for Black men, and the repression of many women’s voices during the civil rights movement is reflected in the way scholarship digests history.

According to historian Bernice McNair Barnett, there are three major biases that influence the way that Black women’s history is construed: (1) Black women are stereotypically connected with “pathologies” within the family, such as female-headedness, illegitimacy, teen pregnancy, poverty, and welfarism; (2) there is a middle-class orientation that ignores poor and working-class women, a large percentage of whom are Black; and (3) there is an apolitical, non-leadership image of Black and poor women as political passivists as opposed to movement leaders.[25] In turn, the roles of Black women have been ignored in research of modern social movements. As such, it is generally assumed that the women involved were white, and the men were Black.[26] While the “great man” theory of leadership is often critiqued by sociologists, this perspective is perpetuated by history, as the leaders were predominantly male, and history loves leaders.

One of the foremost exceptions is Rosa Parks. Parks’ story is included with that of Malcolm X and MLK in history classes, but, in actuality, students only know of her for one event, despite the rest of her activist career being of equal importance. Along with Parks’ lifelong activism, history often fails to mention Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, Alabama State College English professor and president of the Montgomery Women’s Political Council, where Robinson had been actively planning a boycott of city buses months prior to Parks’ arrest.[27] History also ignores the hundreds of women, like Robinson, who were forced to resign from their positions at Alabama State University and other workplaces across the United States for making noise about equality.[28] Society has excluded, ignored, and oppressed Black women; and historical scholarship is no different.

The civil rights movement, though perceived to be led by men, was heavily bolstered by Black women. Though not typically recognized as leaders, Black women initiated protests, formulated strategies, and mobilized other resources necessary for collective action. Racism, sexism, and classism created an environment in which women were silenced, and, as a result, frequently go unnoticed in historical scholarship. Rosa Parks, largely known for her actions on one day in her sixty years of activism, Coretta Scott King for her marital status, Ella Baker for her association with the NAACP, and countless others are the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. It is imperative that we recognize their accomplishments to cease history’s glorification of male leaders when Black women were integral to the success and legacy of the movement, and look past what history wants us to believe.

All sources cited in this essay are written by women.

_____

Notes

[1] Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War, New York; London: NYU Press (2011): 161.

[2] Bernice McNair Barnett, “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” Gender and Society 7, no. 2 (1993): 163; Ibid, 164.

[3] Portrait of Rosa Parks at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960. Photograph. 3.5 x 5 inches. Louisville, Kentucky. Highlander Research and Education Center: Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917-2005.

[4] “Rosa Parks Interview, 1992 February,” Connie Martinson.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid; Christina Greene, “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” Oxford University Press (November 2016): 3.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Coretta Scott King at the Peace-In-Vietnam Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, photograph.

[9] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 3; Vicki Crawford, “Coretta Scott King and the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights: An Enduring Legacy,” The Journal of African American History (January 1, 2007): 112.

[10] Ibid, 114.

[11] Ibid, 116.

[12] Ella Baker on Sept. 18, 1941. Photograph. Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images, from Time Magazine.

[13] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 5.

[14] Anne Romaine, “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine,” 11.

[15] Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes,” FOCUS: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (August 1993):4.

[16] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 5.

[17] Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press (2003): 284; “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine,” 12.

[18] “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes,” 5.

[19] Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Photograph.

[20] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 175.

[21] Ibid, 176.

[22] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 9.

[23] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 164.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid, 165.

[27] Allison Berg, “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta,” Journal of Women’s History (2009): 89.

[28] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 174.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Baker, Ella. “Interview with Ella Baker, April 19, 1977.” Interview by Sue Thrasher. Documenting the American South, n.d. Retrieved from https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0008/G-0008.html

Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Photograph. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@nadiarising411/black-women-the-backbone-of-the-civil-rights-movement-618b9859a5c

Coretta Scott King at the Peace-In-Vietnam Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, photograph. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/coretta-scott-king-fast-facts/index.html

Ella Baker on Sept. 18, 1941. Photograph. Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images, from Time Magazine. Retrieved from https://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/

Parks, Rosa. “Rosa Parks Interview, 1992 February.” Interview by Connie Martinson. The Drucker Institute, February 1992. Retrieved from https://dp.la/item/81d0ae423e14a2f67d20fdb34b3b0cc3

Portrait of Rosa Parks at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960. Photograph. 3.5 x 5 inches. Louisville, Kentucky. Highlander Research and Education Center: Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917-2005. Retrieved from https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM52893

Romaine, Anne. “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine.” Recollection Wisconsin, Wisconsin Historical Society, 1960-1968. Retrieved from https://dp.la/item/5493d0d6be916f0b12a9cc57534d3906

Waldschmidt-Nelson, Britta. “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes.” FOCUS: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, August 1993.

Secondary Sources

Berg, Allison. 2009. “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta.” Journal of Women’s History21 (3): 84-107.

Crawford, Vicki. “Coretta Scott King and the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights: An Enduring Legacy.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 1. January 1, 2007.

Gore, Dayo F. Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. New York; London: NYU Press, 2011.

Greene, Christina. “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.” Oxford University Press: Oxford Research Encyclopedia, American History, November 2016.

McNair Barnett, Bernice. “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class.” Gender and Society 7, no. 2 (1993): 162-181.

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

#civil rights movement #essay #rosa parks #ella baker #coretta scott king #BLM #black lives matter

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flash-impact-for-good · 4 years

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“You’ve come a long way, baby”

This slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby”, was splashed across the glossy magazines of my youth, vaunting women’s progress – via their rights to consume products that had once been reserved for men only. The issue of women’s progress in the business world is another debate entirely: the proverbial glass sometimes seems to be filling gradually (e.g. , according to the French secretary of state in charge of equality between men and women, women held 45,2% of positions on SBF120 management boards in 2019); but the glass moves slowly at the top (21,4% of positions in Exco or equivalent). And these broad numbers hide huge disparities. As mentioned by Guy Le Pechon, MBA INSEAD 69, head of Gouvernance et Structure, and a data specialist on equality between men and women, three corporations among the CAC 40 don’t have any woman at their Exco; and only one reaches the ratio of 40% for this entity.

Yet forward movement is undeniable. I would like to offer here a random walk through some 15 years of experience designing, delivering, and observing initiatives to strengthen the representation of women in companies. Along the way, the useful question I hope to explore is what we have learned about fostering gender balance, and how these insights may help us move further down the road towards greater gender balance.

When several large French companies signed the “Charte de la Diversité” in 2004, our Head of Human Resources asked me to develop a program that would support women’s career development in the organization. I looked at the market to see what was available and was struck by the way that many training firms seemed to assume that women had to be “fixed”, taught to overcome “weaknesses”, or trained in more masculine behavior. This did not feel right – how could we “strengthen” our pools of female talent by focusing on what women might be “doing wrong”? We chose instead to tackle the issue indirectly: I set up a training program led by a specialist in career management for high potentials – a brilliant older man. “Female issues” were never addressed directly in the program – it just so happened that all the (very interesting and carefully selected) participants in each session were women. (What we didn’t know then was that in this way successfully avoided triggering a dangerous unconscious bias about women’s competence, sending instead the message that anyone, and of course women, could benefit from enhancing their career management skills). My first learning: don’t “fix” people who aren’t “broken” – build their strengths.

Interestingly, it was a member of what one could call the “old guard” – a highly successful gentleman in a very powerful job – who made another significant contribution to levelling the playing field. “We have lots of women entering the pipeline,” he told me, “but after a first role, the men all ask to lead a sales team, while the women want to move into marketing – jobs do not give them line management responsibility and credibility.” To counter this, he carefully mapped and measured something which had previously been intuitive: what were the key career steps that opened the way up the corporate ladder, and where relative to those steps were the pools of female talent? The corporate “ladder” actually looked more like a vertical maze; often several steps along a same level were necessary before one could climb to the next rung on the ladder. But like any maze, it was easy to get lost. Second learning: By providing clear experienced-based information about the critical steps on any given level, this gentleman basically “injected information” into the career management process – not to tell women what to do with their careers, but to offer more effective advice, starting early on.

Driving for more women in management eventually began to provoke some pushback: some male colleagues would quietly ask me, “Do I have a future in this organization? Will there always be a woman ahead of me on the promotion list?” Hearing men share such concerns troubled me: if you are promoting a worthy idea and yet generating a sense of unfairness, then the idea needs to be reviewed – not rejected or reduced in ambition, but re-examined. This is when we clearly understood that we had to change not only the way that women looked at themselves in the organization, but also how the organization looked at its people.

A conversation at a conference on diversity with a woman who held a very senior position in her organization gave me additional insight. Asked about her success, she pointed to the “pairs of eyes” that had watched her work over the years and could vouch for her. It was as though her capabilities had to be cross-checked – which was of course equally true for her male colleagues, who intuitively moved around and got themselves “seen” by several potential sponsors. Long before “sponsorship” became a popular concept, she had realized that it was easier for one person to say, “She is ready for the next job!” if someone else could back up the statement.

Waiting for this to happen through multiple-year job rotations, we realized, would take much too long. Then I encountered a talent manager in a small financial services organization who had crafted a clever process to respond to precisely this issue: he organized “walkabouts” for talented individuals, setting up a series of meetings for each with high-level executives who might never meet that young woman (or man) until it came time to make a key staffing decision – which was too late. By putting rising potentials in front of senior management, this talent manager was transforming them from names on a CV to real humans whom the senior executives could get to know. Again, this practice plays to our human nature – no amount of data on a page can replace the power of what we learn from interacting with someone. This learning could be called, “you have to be seen to be believed”.

Despite the value of all these approaches, these actions remain focused on shifting individual mindsets. At some point, on a topic as complex as gender balance, institutions, not just individuals, need to change. And I still did not have the answer to my vague discomfort, my concern that some people felt our efforts to level the playing field were potentially unfair.

Interestingly, it was ideas from INSEAD research, adopted into our organization, that gave us some of the keys. Most INSEADers are familiar with Kim and Mauborgne’s work on “fair process” – the concept that a fair, well-run decision-making process will lead to better acceptance of the outcome, even by those who do not obtain what they want. This work made its way into our organization: the “fair process”, in which all the voices relevant to a decision were heard and considered before that decision was made, became institutionalized as an essential feature of our people management. A fundamental part of the fair process is feedback: because it embraces the full variety of perspectives on a topic or a person, the process makes it possible to provide feedback to the person, so that the individual can continue to learn and grow. Next learning: good process and good feedback confirm that both your intentions and your decisions are fair.

In 2018, INSEAD celebrated 50 years of women at the school and hosted a Summit to showcase research from its Gender Initiative. One presentation by Ivana Naumovska, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, particularly caught my attention. She had performed meta-analysis of multiple diversity initiatives across companies and sectors and had teased out lessons about what did and did not work.

The two areas identified as having greatest positive impact were mentoring programs and network-building initiatives: mentoring because it enabled the participants to understand the rules of the game, how their organization really worked (this was true for both mentees and their mentors), and network-building because it cultivated awareness in the individuals of what opportunities – for jobs, projects, useful partnerships, and even just information sharing – were available across their organizations, especially outside their silos. I was pleased to see these conclusions: they were an academic validation of the intuition which had led us to set up mentoring and networking for communities (not just individuals). In other words, by creating groups of mentors or mentees and getting them to coach each other on how to take up these roles, we let people see that this was simply part of “how we do things around here”. Next lesson: if you want to change institutions, not just individuals, give people shared responsibility to build something new together.

Beyond creating “institutions” that support diversity, what has emerged over time is a culture shift. In the way we pursue gender balance, we are really striving to make good use of the organization’s talent to adapt to changing organizational needs. There are ongoing challenges: how well do all these changes resist a major economic crisis, or a corporate reorganization? As we move out of a public health crisis and towards a difficult economic situation, we need to remain vigilant about topics like diversity. Looking further ahead, I wonder how the “recipes” described above will stand the test of time. Traditional management is being replaced by agile tribes, collectively-managed feature teams, and networked organizations. Millennials have shifting expectations about the meaning of work. What will be the secrets to career success for women (and men) in the organizations of the future? Time will tell, but it is a safe bet that attention to individual mindsets and corporate culture will remain key.

Jocelyn Phelps, MBA INSEAD 93D Program Director, Leadership and Organization Development at Société Générale

#INSEAD #INSEADFORGOOD #BusinessForGood #WomenInBusiness

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femmociraptor · 6 years

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I literally jusf realized I was a lesbian. For the longest time I thought I was bi, then I realized it was just because my mom was always pressuring me to be with men. I’m 19. I feel like a lot of my peers came to this realization sooner. Is that just me? I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. Also I feel like I’m surrounded by straight girls and I wonder if I’ll ever meet anybody...

[via Pew Research]

The age that people come out can be a very personal thing. It’s affected by a lot of factors, such as class, race, sex, gender, educational access, religion, region, family dynamics, and so on. There are averages to be had for every generation, sure, but the thing with averages is that they don’t tell a meaningful story. A lesbian from a working class family of lapsed Catholics is going to have a different experience from a lesbian from a middle class family of observant Muslims and a Butch lesbian coming from an educated WASP background is going to have a different experience from a Femme lesbian coming from an immigrant family kept intentionally functionally illiterate. You really can’t compare these stories with an eye towards assigning value judgments of who should be doing what and by when without doing a disservice to all the people involved here.

The Pew Research survey said that on the whole, young lesbians today tend to come to terms with their sexuality later than both gay men and bisexuals, with an average age of 18 for knowing and 21 for actually telling someone. There are a lot of reasons for this (compulsory heterosexuality being a major one). At 19, I’d say you’re actually right on track for your age group, despite how it may seem. The thing is, you don’t know how many of your peers are currently wrestling with these topics at the moment and just not talking about it. If you and I had been peers at 19, you would have thought I was one of those straight girls you find yourself surrounded by right now… and yet… :-) These things take time. The nature of coming out being what it is (and now in combination with social media), it can seem like everyone else is hitting those milestones way before you, that you’re a late bloomer, but I promise you, they aren’t and you’re not. You’re a lesbian, full stop, and for the great majority of us, the path to realizing that is not an easy one to take. Given what some of us have had to deal with, it’s a miracle any of us get there at all.

A lot of people (gay and straight) make the mistake of thinking that because so many Western countries have marriage equality right now that most of the work towards eradicating “real” homophobia is done. It’s not. Attitudes are slow to change and family dynamics persist. Lesbian is still a dirty word to many (in every sense of the word) and the cultural expectation of being quiet about your sexuality only works to keep gay people (especially gay women) in the dark and in the closet, purposefully separated from others who may be like them and kept away from that intimate knowledge about themselves. The fact that it takes so many of us so long to realize who we are is not an accident.

As for your mum, I empathize. I am in my 30’s and my mother still points out attractive men to me as potential romantic interests or half-jokingly encourages me to consider this man or that. It’s frustrating and it has gradually lessened over the years but given our starting point, I suspect it will never fully go away. The relationship a gay child has with their straight same-sex parent is often a complicated one. They’re projecting a lot of their own dreams onto you and often can’t separate who they are from who you are. Even the most progressive, pro-marriage equality parent has issues. Supporting something in the abstract is quite different from sitting across from it at the breakfast table or seeing it on display at Aunt Helen’s wedding. A lot of us have had to parent ourselves as a result so if you feel like you are in this category, just know that your path is a well travelled one and there are others like you who can help you. Seek out your local older lesbians and make friends. They are out there waiting to be found and if you go out with kindness and an open heart, more often than not that is what you will receive in turn.

Amongst my friend group, we’ve talked at length about the phenomenon where it feels like, when compared to our straight peers, most gay people are about 10 years behind. So many (out) gay people I know are off by a good 10 years or more compared to their straight peers on their educational goals, their careers, their relationship milestones, family relationships, financial goals (oh so massively behind…), family goals, and so on. It happens so much it’s almost a running joke now. “She’s in her early 30’s which is early 20’s in gay years, so she’s just wrapping up university now”… or how about finally getting the relationship with your parents in your 30s that your siblings had in their 20’s… or seeing lesbians in their 40’s and 50’s finally buying their first home and then seeing the awkward arm pats and “I don’t know why you didn’t do this sooner”’s from their straight friends and family contrasted with the glee and support (and envy) of their gay friends who just get it. To be quite honest, if you weren’t 10 years behind, based on my experience you would be the exception rather than the rule.

I won’t lie to you. You absolutely do have some catching up to do. You have some catching up to do with yourself. Every gay person does. This is a pretty big aspect of who you are that you’re just coming to terms with now and it’s going to change your relationship with yourself and your conception of who you are both in your past and going forward. You also are figuring out some pretty fundamental things about what you like and how you feel and that’s information which your straight peers have had access to their whole lives. And you won’t have the relative protection of adolescence and the legal protection of being a minor as you figure these things out… You won’t have the generally supportive parent who tells you that Jess is a nice girl but honey, you shouldn’t make your university decisions around her… or you will but you won’t be sure whether you can truly trust the motives behind their advice. You will deny and deny that your first bad relationship is actually bad because the other person will become a living stand-in for your gayness and a rejection of them is a rejection of you. And the “I told you so”’s in the aftermath when you finally end it will feel personal in a way you can’t quite describe… and the decisions you made during that relationship to keep it afloat will have greater and longer lasting consequences than the ones you might have made at 16. No one tells lesbians what safe lesbian sex is in health class and so you will fumble through your first few encounters and have to cobble together a bunch of broken and vague resources to try to construct your own understanding of how it works and you will find that when you first go to get tested, 9 times out of 10 that shitty About.com article you read at 2am will have more useful information to give you than the person sitting in front of you with a healthcare degree and sensible shoes. You will be tempted to get wrapped up in the celebratory nature of marriage equality (as will the good people around you), will feel yourself wanting something positive and good and unapologetic in your sometimes positive and sometimes good but often apologetic gay life, will find yourself seduced by the promise of legitimacy for who you are and the person you love, and will want to get married to the first healthy long term girlfriend you have… and if that relationship ends (as many, many do), you will have to decide amidst the grief whether you will mourn its demise in private or brave the disappointment and almost inappropriate investment your community had in your (very personal) life while also being a Bad Gay in the eyes of both the straight and sometimes gay people around you. As a gay person and specifically as a gay woman, you will have to learn to be your own biggest advocate. You will have to develop a spine of steel. You will have to go forward and forge a life for yourself with few role models and even fewer mentors. You’re blazing a path and it won’t be easy.

But it will be rewarding… especially compared with the alternative.

Be gentle with yourself. It’s hard and you’re just getting started but the payoff is a life well lived and (hopefully) well loved. You will meet someone, several someones if you’re lucky, and the more you live your life, the more you will notice a young lesbian coming into her own, growing up and finding out just who and what she is and being surprised time and time again at just how strong she really can be when all is said and done. You have the promise of an entire life stretching out in front of you. What do you want to do with that promise?

Never forget that you are a gay woman who was formed in a culture that was not meant for women and or for gays and would deny the agency and humanity to both. The fact that you are even at this point at all is a testament to your strength and the resiliency of your human spirit. Don’t dismiss that. It’s a hell of a thing and it will carry you a long way. Coming out to yourself as a lesbian is a massive achievement and I know first hand just how hard you’ve had to struggle and I want to say that I’m proud of you. There is a reason it’s called pride… because you’ve had to fight like hell (and you had to win) to get here.

#good luck anon #we are everywhere.#long post #anon #asks #my answers #lesbian content #lesbian culture #lesbian tumblr #coming out #compulsory heterosexuality

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dillydedalus · 5 years

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what i read in march

several antigones & some other stuff

call me zebra, azareen van der vliet oloomi

oh boy. i really wanted to like this one, but uh. nah. so this book is about zebra, a young iranian-american from a lineage of ‘autodidacts, anarchists and atheists’, still traumatised by her childhood experience as a refugee (incl. her mother’s death on route). when her father dies years later, zebra decides to retrace the route of her exile thru barcelona, turkey, and back to iran. this sounds great! the beginning is good! but zebra is a quixotic figure (don quixote is unsubtly flagged as THE intertext several times), delusional about her own importance, obsessed with some kind of great literary mission and obnoxious & condescending & egotistic as all fuck (she looks down on students but treats her realisation that like, intertextuality is a thing, as this grand revelation when like..... we been knew since Lit. Theory 101) - and this is intentional & part of the quixotic thing & in general i approve of abrasive & bristly & difficult female characters BUT i expected there to be a gradual process of realisation where she sees that a) maybe her entirely male lineage of geniuses ain’t all that, c) her mission is uh.... incomprehensible. instead, once she reaches spain, she gets bogged down in endless pretentious bullshit and a #toxic relationship that takes up way too much space. knowing that all of that is likely intentional doesn’t.... make it good. also the writing is pretty overwrought for the most part & not even your narrator’s voice being Like That excuses plain bad writing, like the absurd overuse of ‘intone’ and ‘pose’ as dialogue tags. i see the potential and i see the point & i liked some of it but uh. not good. 2/5, regretfully, generously

in the distance, hernan diaz

i don’t really go for westerns or man vs wilderness stories but damn i’m impressed. despite the violence & deprivation and sheer amount of gross shit, this story of a swedish immigrant getting lost in the american west for decades remains at its core so human, so tender, so sad (honestly this book is SO SAD, yet sometimes oddly hopeful), so evocative of isolation, loneliness, and the desire for human connection. 4/5

notes on a thesis, tiphaine rivière (tr. from french)

god, if i ever considered doing a phd i sure don’t anymore. this is a short graphic novel about a young woman’s descent into academic hell while writing her dissertation about labyrinths in kafka. it’s funny, the art is expressive and fanciful, and it is incredibly relateable if you’ve ever tried to actually write your brilliant, glorious, intricately constructed argument down, battled uni administration or had a panic attack over how to phrase a harmless email to a prof. Academia: Not Even Once. 3.5/5

red mars, kim stanley robinson

this is a very long hard sci-fi novel about mars colonisation & terraforming, discussing the ethics of terraforming, the potentials of a truly ‘martian’ culture, and how capitalism will inevitably fuck everything up, including outer space. all of this is up my alley and i did really like the first half (early colonisation efforts), but the 2nd half (beginning of terraforming, lots of politicking) was a slog - i liked reading about how terraforming was going, but the rest was just bloated, scattered and confusing. also there’s a tedious love triangle the whole time. 2/5

dragon keeper (rain wild chronicles #1), robin hobb

i love robin hobb she really can write a whole 500+ page book of set-up, characterisation and politicking and make it WORK. anyway, this has disabled dragons, a quest for mystical city, lots of rain wilds weirdness, a dragon scholar in an unhappy marriage, liveships, a sweet dummy romance, and uh... a lil penpalship between two messenger bird keepers? not much happens but it’s so NICE & so much is going to happen. also althea & brashen & malta turned up & i screamed. 3.5/5

season of migration to the north, tayeb salih (tr. from arabic)

this is a seminal work of post-colonial arabic literature, a haunting tale of the impact of colonialisation, especially of cultural hegemony in the education system, the disturbing dynamics of orientalism and sex, and village life in a modernising post-colonial sudan. it’s important, it’s well-written, it’ll make you think, but fair warning, there is a lot of violence against women - it has a point but still uh... wow. 3.5/5

dune, frank herbert

SOMETIMES.... BOOKS THAT ARE CONSIDERED MASTERWORKS OF THEIR GENRE.... ARE WORSE. so much worse. the writing in this is atrocious (”his voice was charged with unspeakable adjectives”), herbert somehow manages to make court intrigue and plotting UNBELIEVABLY DULL and sure, it was the 60s, but i’m p sure people knew imperialism was bad in the 60s! the main character, the eugenically-engineered chosen one or whatever, literally spends years among the oppressed & resisting natives of a planet ruled by a space!empire and at the end he’s like ‘i own this planet bc imperialism is Good Actually’. emotionally neglecting/abusing your wife, who you (!!!) decided (!!!) to marry for political reasons bc you’d rather marry your gf is also Good Actually (cosigned by the protag’s mother....) the worldbuilding is influential for the genre, sure w/e, but mainly notable for there just.... being a lot of it, the whole mythology-science makes No Goddamn Sense, all around this is just Bad. Bad. 0.5/5 i hope the Really Big Worms eat everyone

dragon haven (rain wild chronicles #2), robin hobb

this healed my soul after toxic exposure to dune. anyway w/o spoilers: everyone is very much In Their Feelings (including me) and there’s a lot of Romance and Internal Conflict and Feelings Drama and Complicated Relationships and Group Dynamics and also dragons, which are really like very big, very haughty cats who can speak, and a flood and a living river barge with a mind of his own (love u tarman!). it’s still slow and languid but so so good. also: several people in this have to be told that People Are Gay, Steven, including Sedric, who is himself Gay People. 4/5

an unkindness of ghosts, solomon rivers

super interesting scifi story set on a generation ship with a radically stratified society in which the predominantly black lowerdeckers are oppressed and exploited by the predominantly white upperdeckers, mixed in with a lot of Gender Stuff (the lowerdeckers seem to have a much less stable and binary gender system than the upperdeckers) and neuroatypicality. it’s conceptually rich and full of potential, but just doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to the plot. 3/5

sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, bruno schulz (tr. from polish)

more dreamy surreal short stories (ish?). i didn’t like this collection quite as much as the amazing street of crocodiles, but they are still really good, even tho you never quite know what is going on. featuring flights of birds, people turning into insects, thoughts about seasons and time, fireman pupae stuck in the chimney, and the continuing weird fixation on adela the maid. 3.5/5

angela merkel ist hitlers tocher, christian alt & christian schiffer

a fun & accessible guide to conspiracy theories, focusing on the current situation in germany and the current boom in conspiracy theories, but also including some historical notes. i wish it had been a bit less fun & flippant and more in-depth and detailed bc it really is quite shallow at points, but oh well. also yes the title does indeed translate to ‘angela merkel is hitler’s daughter’ so. yes. 2.5/5

the midwich cuckoos, john wyndham

fun lil scifi story in which almost all women in sleepy village midwich are suddenly pregnant, all at the same time. the resulting children, predictably, are strange, creepy, and possibly a threat to humanity. i get that it was written in the 50s but it is strange to read a book where almost all women, and only women, are affected by A Thing, but all the main characters are men & no one tells the women ‘hey we think it’s xenogenesis’ - like realistically 80% of women affected went to the Neighbourhood Lady Who Takes Care of These Things like ‘hello, one (1) abortion please’ and the plot just ended there. i still liked it tho! 3/5

antigone project

antigone, the original bitch, by sophocles (tr. by fagles)

god antigone really is That Bitch. that’s all i have to say. 4.5/5

antigone, That Bitch but in french, jean anouilh

the Nazi-occupied france antigone. loved the meta commentary on what tragedy is and how antigone has to step into the Role of Antigone, which will kill her “but there’s nothing she can do. her name is antigone and she will have to play her part through to the end”. i didn’t really like (esp. given the ~historical context) the choice to make creon much more sympathetic, trying to save antigone’s life from the beginning. hmm. 3.5/5

antigonick, anne carson

look, antigone really is That Bitch and you know what? so is anne carson. best thing i’ve read so far this year, don’t ask me about it or i’ll yell the task of the translator of antigone at you. 5/5

home fire, kamila shamsie

honestly i really wanted to like this bc politically it’s on point and an anti-islamophobia antigone sounds amazing, but it just doesn’t succeed as a book/adaption. it spends way too much time in build-up/backstory (the play’s plot only starts in the second half of the book!), waaayyy to much time on the weirdly fetishistic antigone/haimon romance, and even the most interesting characters (ismene & creon) don’t fully work out. sad. 2/5

currently reading: the magic mountain by thomas mann, but i should be done in a week or so! also: the paper menagerie by ken liu, a collection of sff short stories

#the books i read #long post

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delabaisse · 6 years

Text

Vertigo

This has been a project FOREVER, and honestly, I have given it up a number of times, but I’ve always come back to it because it’s also exactly what I need in a story I’m writing: an additional challenge to keep my perfectionism in check. I hope you like it!

Bossuet didn't know much about Courfeyrac, except that he was ridiculously funny and insanely easy to talk to, and that he sat next to Bossuet in the second to last row in Domestic Relations, managing to turn every single one of the dry lessons into a firework of whispered puns and innuendo.

Courfeyrac had tried to invite Bossuet along to whatever he got up to on the weekend – Bossuet thought it had something to do with activism, though it might just be an endless stream of parties, you could never be sure with Courfeyrac – several times. Bossuet had to turn him down for increasingly unlikely sounding reasons, because that was how Bossuet's life tended to work.

He'd stopped inviting Bossuet for a while, after that, but last week, he must have wanted to try one last time, and Bossuet had to turn him down because that had been the Day of the Eviction Notice. Courfeyrac had looked a little disbelieving and a little sad, but Bossuet refused to lose a potential friend to what a professor had once described as a Case of Bad Luck so Severe as to Appear Unbelievable, I'm Sorry Lèsgle But I Will Have to Give You that F.

That was why Bossuet brought the eviction notice to uni the next week and slid it over to Courfeyrac's desk before he came in.

Courfeyrac, when he sat down, eyed the letter warily, but upon realising what it was, he cast a quick glance in Bossuet's direction and picked it up to read.

“Shit,” he said emphatically, his eyes flitting over the text, “and here I thought you were turning me down for the fun of it. Truth be told, man, I thought maybe you were homophobic for a bit there.”

Bossuet almost fell out of the rickety chair. “No! No, good lord. That would be hypocritical of me. I am the opposite of homophobic. I am homophilic. Is that a word?”

“It is a word, but I am not sure if it is the one you meant to use”, Courfeyrac replied with half an indulging smile.

“I'm bi, is what I meant”, Bossuet clarified, and got treated to a front row view of a slow smile spreading on Courfeyrac's face until he was grinning so broadly Bossuet almost assumed he was taking the piss. He clapped a hand on Bossuet's shoulder and said,

“Buddy, I am so glad you brought your eviction notice. You are going to love my friends, I promise. You are going to find a new flat – check this out, I set up an LGBT roommate finder, Musichetta and Joly are looking for a roommate, you're going to love them to pieces -” he scribbled a URL on the backside of the eviction notice and handed it back to Bossuet. “- and you are going to finally make it to a meeting, because now I know about your bad luck and we can trick it. I can't wait for you to meet them! I keep telling them about the funny dude from Dom Rel, you already have, like, instant friends. Just pour some real life interaction on top. Second hand friends. They'll love you.”

Bossuet was not so sure. Courfeyrac was a very loveable person, so surely he would have all kinds of friends, each with their own assets – but in Bossuet's experience, the friends of people who were universally adored tended to not get along with each other too well.

Courfeyrac must have sensed some of those feelings, because he sobered slightly. “I mean, just come to a meeting first, then we'll see what happens.”

“I will”, Bossuet promised, but of course, it did not work out that weekend.

The flatmatefinder, however, worked like a charm. Musichetta and Joly's little blurb sounded endearing, and the flat was close enough to uni that Bossuet was slightly afraid of jinxing it.

Contrary to expectation, they replied immediately when Bossuet finally came around to sending a tentative message, and with such cheer that Bossuet wondered if they were some of those that Courfeyrac called “instant friends”, biased by the tales of That Funny Kid in Dom Rel.

Eh, whatever. If anyone could counteract Bossuet's bad luck, it was Courfeyrac. Bossuet would take it, and gladly.

Bossuet was about to give the doorbell a second ring when the buzzer sounded. The heavy door opened, revealing a staircase just old enough to look antique rather than rundown. The stairs were wooden, rounded with wear at the edges, and they creaked when Bossuet set foot on them. After a long, winding journey all the way up to the fourth story, a young man with eyebrows so high on his forehead as to look permanently perplexed came into sight. He was leaning in the apartment doorway, somehow managing to make the pose look nervous.

“Bossuet, for the flat share, right?” he said, his fingers clenching and unclenching rapidly. “Hi, I'm Joly. Um, I'm very sorry, Musichetta isn't home yet, but she's going to be any minute -”

Bossuet stepped forward and held out a hand, mustering a hopefully calming smile. “Joly, it's very nice to meet you in person.”

Joly considered this for a few seconds before taking Bossuet's hand. His grip was firm, but his smile was not. “It's nice to meet you, too”, he said, “I'm sorry, I should have led with that. Musichetta will be here soon, she's better at this, I promise, she'll show you around like a professional, she's got this down to a t, she's wonderful -” Bossuet took a careful step back to give the man some space, and Joly immediately seemed to deflate in what looked like an even mixture of relief and disappointment. “I jinxed it, didn't I? I'm sorry.”

“Nothing has been jinxed”, Bossuet told him firmly. “What's wrong, Joly? This is the third time you've apologised to me now, and I only just met you. Nothing has happened. Usually, I'm the one who meets new people by apologising a ridiculous number of times, but that's because I got swept into a parking car by a squall or I entered the wrong house by accident and this nice couple thinks I'm a burglar and they're standing there holding matching baseball bats, or-”

Joly laughed, in that split second, his face transformed entirely. His eyebrows, impossibly, rose even higher on his forehead. His eyelids crinkled. Bossuet would be willing to admit, to anyone who'd ask, that it was a little charming. “Thank you for that mental image, Bossuet”, Joly said, his fingers stilling briefly.

Bossuet nodded graciously. “You're very welcome. I think there were little bats on them, too.”

Joly gasped. “A pun! I hope you congratulated them.”

„I tried“, said Bossuet, „I'm not sure if that was before or after they slammed the door in my face though, so I don't know if they heard it. But people who appreciate great puns usually find a likeminded friend group once they've scared off everyone else – I would know – so I assumed they already knew the mastery of their pun.“

Joly stepped aside a little. “Would you like to come in?” he said. Then he eyed Bossuet as Bossuet stepped past him, and added slowly, “you don't look like you'd be swept off by a squall.”

“I was on a bicycle at the time, and holding an umbrella”, Bossuet explained. “Bigger windage.”

The hallway was badly lit and cramped in a way that made Bossuet feel immediately at home. There was a shoerack by one wall, shoes dangling off both sides for lack of space. “Should I take off my shoes, too?” Bossuet asked, pointing to it, and Joly nodded. “Oh yes, please do. Musichetta is the one who buys all the shoes, but I'm the one who insists they have to come off in the hallway. We only bust half of all the gender norms. I'm a bit of a nag when it comes to cleanliness, I'm afraid.” Joly took a deep breath. His forehead creased sorrowfully. “We think it might be OCD. But I'm not sure, I just – with the jinxing and the cleaning and the making sure exactly 50% of all gender norms are busted and, doesn't matter, the point is, I might freak out a little like I did just now, it happens, I think you should know if you moved in with us. Through here – this is the kitchen.”

The doorbell rang twice just as Joly sat them down at a very clean, though somewhat battered kitchen table. Joly released what sounded like a pent-up breath, but didn't move to buzz the visitor in.

Bossuet turned towards the door with what must have been a very confused expression, because Joly laughed again and explained: “Oh, that was just Musichetta, she likes to announce herself. She's got a key. You'll love her, she's wonderful.”

Bossuet wondered if the continuous declarations of love came from a place of worry or a place of genuine worship as the sound of very determined steps in what sounded like very high heels approached, then came to an abrupt halt and turned into slipper-padded shuffling in the hallway. Then Musichetta entered and solved the mystery once and for all.

She was petite and beautiful, with big brown eyes and a determined twist to the mouth as she stepped forward to shake hands with Bossuet. Her hands were tiny. So were her feet, Bossuet noticed, looking down as though blinded. “You must be Bossuet”, she said pleasantly. Her voice was a marvel, deep and smooth and round. Bossuet would kill for a voice like that. “It's wonderful to meet you,” she said, and Bossuet replied, “likewise,” because more than one-word-answers would be ill-advised right now, probably, lest Bossuet blurted out something like I don’t know if I want to be you or date you. “Joly has already shown you all the rooms?” She asked, making Joly look so worried again that Bossuet found some more words for his benefit immediately: “I've seen the hallway and the kitchen. Joly praised your tour-giving skills, so I assumed he was leaving the rest to you?”

Musichetta gave Joly a fond look, and Joly smiled widely in response. Snapping him out of his nervousness was about the easiest and most rewarding thing Bossuet had ever done.

Musichetta reached over to ruffle Joly's hair, then made a beckoning gesture towards Bossuet, palm facing down. “Come with me then, young man, I'll show you to your chambers”, she said, and Bossuet obediently got up out of the squeaky plastic chair to follow her past the shoerack with the multitude of tiny shoes again. The pair Musichetta must have just added was a glossy dark blue with heels that gave Bossuet vertigo just looking at them. Vertigo, or something else like amazement paired with a shaky twinge.

“Or, really, chamber”, Musichetta corrected herself, opening a door with a flourish. “Joly and I have gotten into the habit of calling it the Office, with a capital O, because it makes us sound more grown-up and less like we can't be bothered to find ourselves a roommate. It might take a while to shake that habit. Anyway - it's not a big room, but it's got the best view. Plus, skylights are great for when it rains. A hassle to clean, but the sound and view totally make up for it.”

Bossuet regarded the ceiling's slope towards the floor and thought, I'm going to hit my head on this every day. There was a fondness in the thought that Bossuet could not quite place. Something like the opposite of nostalgia: The certainty of having found a new place where memories would soon be made.

Musichetta eyed Bossuet quizzically for a second, then went on to talk about how parquet really had the best of all worlds, easy to clean, warm to the touch, and not sticky like linoleum. Bossuet spared the spotless if lightly scuffed floor hardly a glance before earnestly telling Musichetta, “I'm as in as I'm going to be.”

Musichetta visibly deflated. “We had a platter of cookies ready to woo you”, she said, managing to sound pleased and disappointed at the same time. “I had this whole speech about how our rooms were perfectly situated to ensure maximal school trip feeling while maintaining the most possible privacy. I was going to show you our room. I made decorations out of old books specifically for this occasion!”

“On second thought, I might have been wrong when I said I'm as in as I'm going to be”, Bossuet amended quickly, “Because I am in fact more in now. By all means, keep going!”

Musichetta squinted. “You know what?” she said after a while. “I like your way of thinking, Mister. Allow me to show you Joly's and my room. It's across the hall to ensure maximal school trip feeling while maintaining as much privacy as possible.”

Bossuet laughed and followed her out of the room again, across the hallway, where Joly was peeking out of the kitchen in what was already beginning to feel like a familiar way, and into the second room.

Moving house went about as well as Bossuet expected it to.

There were several Incidents, including a neighbour mistaking Bossuet for a robber and very nearly causing an ambulance-worthy scene, the cat from the lovely lady on the first floor running into Joly's legs, causing him to save the cat and himself from bodily harm in a maneuver that unfortunately put all of his weight onto Bossuet's Breakables carton (which Bossuet had refused to touch, hoping to bypass its very obvious fate) and several friends canceling at the last minute, leaving Bossuet with Joly and Musichetta to do all the actual moving.

What Bossuet hadn't expected was for the mood to never drop. There was the occasional swear word, especially from Musichetta, especially while lugging Bossuet's closet up into the fourth floor, but it always sounded like breathless laughter towards the end, and Bossuet caught several more glances of Joly's life-changing smile from behind pieces of furniture or above cartons he was holding the opposite end of.

At eight in the evening, Musichetta sat down on a carton, put her feet up on another, and refused to get up again until they ordered pizza.

“Do I tell her she's sitting on my Breakables carton,” Bossuet whispered to Joly as they went to the kitchen to fetch the takeout flyers, and Joly burst out laughing.

“I mean, if we just order pizza, we solve the problem too”, he pointed out. “Plus, at this point... does it matter?”

“Probably not,” Bossuet agreed. “I might never look into it again, fearing that my sheer presence might cause more stuff to have broken in the first place. I might as well relabel it Schroedinger's Breakables Carton.”

Joly sobered. “Is it always like this, for you?” he asked. “Your life, I mean.”

“Always.” Bossuet shrugged a shoulder. “I get tired of it sometimes, but usually, it just gives me too many great stories to be seriously upset.”

“Are we talking about Bossuet's freakishly bad luck?” Musichetta asked from where she'd made herself comfortable on the floor. “How'd that happen, anyway? Did you fall into a cauldron when you were a kid or something?”

“A witch cursed me,” Bossuet replied, one of the glib answers out of the Pile of Answers to Give When Someone Inquired after the Bad Luck, “It's a whole tragic thing. Who's for cheesy crust? I think we've earned ourselves some cheesy crust.”

They ended up sharing an extra large pizza with cheesy crust and extra cheese, and then Musichetta's tiny feet ended up in Bossuet's lap, “because you owe me a massage, for all the stairs I ascended today!” and Joly, impossibly, didn't seem to mind. Bossuet threw him a wary look every now and then in between kneading Musichetta's feet and trying not to admire them too openly, but all he did was point out that every stair Musichetta had ascended she had also descended, and hand Bossuet a bottle of disinfectant when Musichetta pulled back her feet with a contented sigh.

When they had both left Bossuet alone in the Office, it was long after midnight, the Breakables Box had been relabeled “Brokenables” by Musichetta in aggressively red sharpie, and the stars were shining through the headlights like they were trying to make a lasting impression. Like someone might in a job interview.

Bossuet lay down on the mattress, looked up into the night sky, and felt luckier than ever before.

“You're hired”, Bossuet told the night sky.

Bossuet was incorporated into Joly and Musichetta's household in a heartbeat, and after only a few days, they had already established routines that neither of them would miss for the world.

From there, it took only a couple of weeks for the place to feel, deeply and profoundly, like home.

Bossuet got used to new ambient noises like the staccato of a wooden spoon on the rim of a pot as Joly got rid of surplus sauce, or the shuffling of Musichetta's slippers on the tiled hallway floor, or their unmistakeable shower duets (mostly disney, and mostly in tune, but there had been bits and pieces from musicals here and there, and sometimes a tune would hit Bossuet like a knife in the middle of a massage.) Bossuet loved every aspect of it.

A lot of the time, when Bossuet passed Musichetta and Joly’s bedroom, their door was half open, and about 80% of the time, when it was, they were up for a cuddle pile.

Bossuet usually snuck a glance inside to catch a glimpse of them cuddling or sprawled on the floor studying, or in the middle of an animated discussion. Seconds of borrowed intimacy. Sometimes, they would beckon Bossuet over to join them, and sometimes they didn’t.

Bossuet tried not to think too much about what it meant to develop a crush on both of your flatmates who were also dating each other.

It was still dark outside when Bossuet ventured into the hallway one especially cold December morning with the intention of filling a hot water bottle that would make the broken heating (which, suspiciously, only affected the Office) slightly more bearable.

Warm, dim light was seeping out from the half-open door to Musichetta and Joly’s room, and Bossuet glanced inside habitually. Joly seemed to have left for work already, and Musichetta was perched on her dresser, half-facing the mirror on the wall behind it. Only the light bulbs surrounding the mirror were burning, throwing Musichetta’s face into relief and casting long shadows across the rest of the room. Musichetta seemed momentarily absorbed in applying mascara, but made eye-contact with Bossuet through the mirror in a way that felt significant, so Bossuet stayed and watched for a moment, icy feet be damned.

When Musichetta was done with the mascara, she beckoned Bossuet over with a now-familiar gesture, her palm facing downwards, tiny fingers wiggling. Bossuet went without a second thought.

Musichetta pointed to the armchair, and Bossuet took a seat, receiving a satisfied nod from Musichetta in return.

The room was almost warm enough for Bossuet to fall asleep then and there, the atmosphere somewhere between eerie and sleepy in the way only early mornings before the first word of the day ever were. But something about the way Musichetta applied her make-up was capturing enough to keep Bossuet’s eyes from falling shut.

She was meticulous, but routinely so, and Bossuet watched in silence as Musichetta’s lovely face turned into something no less lovely, but sharper. Bossuet felt a stab of something, perhaps guilt at watching her so intently, perhaps envy at the steadiness of her fingers. It was too early to parse it beyond its heavy significance. Musichetta must have caught an edge of it on Bossuet’s face through the mirror, because she said, abruptly: “Want me to do you, too?”

There was a split second of Bossuet’s heart working double time, leaving no room to form words even if the only word that might have needed forming was yes. But then the moment was over, and Musichetta turned around to face Bossuet, frowned slightly to herself and said, “I’m not sure why I said that.”

Because you always know what to say, Bossuet didn’t reply. Even if you don’t know what it means.

Bossuet didn’t know what it meant, either.

“Me neither”, Bossuet finally decided to say, lightly, “but I seem very suddenly and very badly to want you to do my make-up, so it must have worked.” Musichetta didn’t wait for Bossuet to confirm it a second time, just patted the free space opposite her on the dresser, and Bossuet went and sat down at her gesture again.

She picked up a pair of tweezers from one of the boxes strewn between them, and raised her eyebrows at Bossuet in silent question.

“I don’t think my workplace ever specified I needed manly unplucked eyebrows, so go to town”, Bossuet said, and to town Musichetta went.

It hurt worse than Bossuet had imagined, a kind of rapid twinge that Bossuet was unused to, and there were a couple of tears that Musichetta gracefully ignored.

“There you go”, She said kindly after a minute. Bossuet turned towards the mirror. Musichetta’s skill was undeniable: there was a certain sharpness to Bossuet’s features that hadn’t been there before, a cleanness that Bossuet appreciated, experimentally raising both eyebrows.

“I love it”, Bossuet said, with feeling.

“Want me to go on, do a full face?”

“Please do.”

This time, Bossuet’s eyes did fall shut as Musichetta’s fingers touched the skin of Bossuet’s face, gently but routinely.

Later that day, when Joly peered into the Office on his way to the kitchen, he stopped abruptly, retraced his last steps, and did a double take so obvious Bossuet had to assume it was for comic effect.

Bossuet, tired of the questions the day had already brought and never ceased to bring, only raised one skillfully plucked eyebrow in silence, daring him to say something.

Joly, instead of sputtering or fleeing, came closer and inspected Bossuet's face with an intensity that left Bossuet almost dizzy with conflicting feelings. There was a tiny smile joining Joly's wide-eyed look, Bossuet noticed and took care not to sigh in relief.

“That suits you really well,” Joly said finally. “Well done.”

“Thanks!” Musichetta yelled from where she was wreaking havoc in the kitchen, “I'll take that credit!”

“Fair enough,” Bossuet agreed easily, glad that their streak of theoretically difficult conversations turning out to take only a minimum of maneuvering was left unbroken.

“So, Musichetta convinced you to let her try her make-up skills on you, huh?” Joly asked lightly.

Bossuet shrugged. “To be entirely honest, she didn't have to do much convincing. I mean, look at her. Clearly she knows what she's doing.”

“She really does,” Joly agreed wholeheartedly, worming his way into Bossuet's lap for a welcome-home-hug that had already become commonplace between them.

And that was that.

It was well into their fifth month as flatmates and finally starting to get warmer again even in Bossuet's room, when a light tap-tap-tap-tap-tap at the Office's door announced Musichetta's presence: she tended to knock much softer and faster than Joly.

"Come in, step into my office," Bossuet called, as was custom by now.

Musichetta shuffled in, carrying a fluffy blanket and a laptop.

"I have been kicked out of our room for," her fingers formed sarcastic quotation marks in the air, "'shopping too loudly', so I have come to search refuge-"

"Refuge granted," Bossuet said, immediately getting up from the swivelly chair in front of the desk and instead sitting down on the tiny sofa, patting the space on the other end of it invitingly. "Shopping sounds exciting and Joly is a buffoon for not seeing this. Please tell me all about what you're buying."

Musichetta immediately dropped down on the sofa, bringing her feet up and resting her laptop on them, and if her knee came to rest on Bossuet's thigh in the process, then neither of them felt the need to comment on it. She did give Bossuet a sidelong glance, though, and said, eyes narrowed suspiciously: "You're procrastinating, aren't you. I'm keeping you from your studies."

"Yes, you are, and I could not be more grateful for it. It looks like I will be failing this term anyway for reasons I'm not sure even the secretary fully understands but has assured me cannot be rectified even though they are at the most forty percent my fault."

Musichetta gave Bossuet a wide-eyed look, still not entirely accustomed to the infamous Bad Luck. "Oh, shit," she said softly, squeezing Bossuet's shoulder. "What the fuck happened? Do you want me to call them and tear them a new one? That sounds pretty major."

Joly and she had been around for several cases of Bad Luck that were minor enough that Bossuet could turn them to laughter with no effort at all. It had been a while since something this major had gone to shit, and Bossuet was still struggling to make it sound funny.

"Apparently, the credit points for all of my exams were nullified because I let a fellow student use my account once to last-minute apply to a couple of courses because his own account kept throwing him out. All the professors assured him they knew it was him applying and taking the tests, but the system apparently did not. So now since I technically failed the courses he applied for - it's a whole thing. But I would like it to be known that even if I was bested by the system, I did manage to save Marius Pontmercy from it, who is a fucking genius and couldn't hurt a fly, so it's worth something."

"Marius Pontmercy!" Musichetta exclaimed, and okay, this was not what Bossuet had thought she would take away from this, but alright - "He's part of that group we're trying to get you to join, Les Amis!"

Bossuet laughed. "See, I saved one of our own. I really fucking hated college anyway."

Musichetta patted Bossuet's shoulder again, sympathetic. "Still," she said, with some weight, "it fucking sucks. I'm sorry it happened this way. My offer to call the secretary still stands, I do calls for Joly all the time."

"I'll figure out if I even really want to go to college first, because at the moment I'm tending towards no," Bossuet said, "but I really appreciate the offer a lot anyway, so thank you. But let's do some shopping first, why don't we? What were you looking for?"

"Shoes!" Musichetta said, now leaning into Bossuet with most of her weight and tilting her laptop screen down slightly. "I have to order them from this special website that does unusual shoe sizes because my feet are that small. But they're pretty good, and the shipping isn't terribly expensive, so it's okay."

The screen showed a pair of burgundy boots with impressive heels, and when Musichetta clicked the drop-down menu to show her size (four, which was already enough to startle Bossuet into almost letting out a sound), it dropped down all the way to 16.

"Thirteen," Bossuet said, softly, almost awed.

Musichetta, who had been hovering the cursor in the vicinity of the little blue 4, immediately moved it to the little number 13, clicked and held, highlighting it in blue.

"That your size?" she asked.

Bossuet nodded, holding a breath, without really knowing to what end.

"Do you want to buy a pair as well?" Musichetta asked, not unkindly, but not so kindly as to seem patronising. Bossuet nodded again, mutely.

"That's great, we can split the shipping!" Musichetta released the click, and Bossuet the breath, as she added one pair in size 13, and one pair in size four to her virtual shopping basket. She clapped her hands cheerfully.

"This is great, I have never had a partner in unusual shoe sizes before," she said, finishing up the order with a couple of quick clicks. Bossuet felt the sudden urge to hide behind her back and curl up like an armadillo, and did not try to withstand it.

Musichetta's arm came around Bossuet's shoulder immediately and she gave it a couple of absent pats. "Is this about ordering women's shoes? Don't worry about it, Bossuet, darling, nobody in this household will even bat an eyelash. Nobody at Les Amis would, either", she added, with that wheedling tone she got whenever she talked about the group now. "Well, Marius might, but making Marius blush is half the fun of being there, so it doesn't count."

"I really do need to meet them all", Bossuet said. "Do you think if I let the bad luck have my college career, it'll let me go to a meeting?"

"Bargaining, I like it!", Musichetta replied instantly, planting an excited kiss on Bossuet's cheek. Bossuet froze for a second, causing Musichetta to squeeze the shoulder closest to her reassuringly.

"Joly doesn't mind. I know you've been worried. We're not that exclusive, and he's not the jealous type, anyway."

"Oh", Bossuet said. A few seconds passed, enough for Bossuet to calm down and Musichetta to tilt her cheek in invitation. "In that case", Bossuet finally said and leaned in to kiss her as well, a split second touch that traveled like lightning all the way to the fingertips, which kept tingling until well into the evening.

And if Joly gave Bossuet a particularly knowing and fond smile during dinner, in the middle of trying to come up with a way to trick the fates into allowing that first meeting with Les Amis that Bossuet had been anticipating for so long, now, then none of them mentioned it.

Well, Bossuet was tempted to, because Bossuet felt the way being struck by lightning a second time in the same day must feel. Not that exclusive, Bossuet thought. That might be one way to put it.

It took another two weeks for it to work out; two weeks, in which Bossuet gently failed out of College and not so gently fell in love with both roommates, who were also dating each other. Bossuet could not stress enough how bad of an idea it sounded like, but that did nothing to slow down the process.

The thing was, it felt like a good thing more often than it didn't, and that was what alarmed Bossuet the most. Whenever a moment traversed friendly territory to emerge on the flirty side, Joly and Musichetta made sure to give Bossuet kind smiles and reassuring touches, as if they wanted to make sure that Bossuet did not freak out and run away. Which, most of the time, was a very real threat.

Bossuet, in turn, did not freak out and run away, and even smiled and touched them back some of the time.

Their shoes arrived in the second week. Just seeing the package sitting next to the shoerack was enough to make Bossuet's heart race, and Musichetta's excited shriek when she came home that day didn't exactly help that condition.

She kicked off her shoes and ran for the kitchen, the gentle padded tap-tap-tap of her stockinged feet on the floor merging into a slide as she swang around a corner. Bossuet bent down to pick up her shoes and balance them on the top of the shoerack, precariously, and waited for her to return with a pair of scissors.

She did, after a few seconds, the scissors extended handle-first to Bossuet like a good kindergartner. Bossuet carefully took them from her. "Are you sure you want me to do this?"

"They're your first high-heels! You gotta celebrate the process!"

Bossuet didn't find anything to argue with that, instead gingerly setting to opening the package. The carton parted easily enough, revealing brown packaging paper and a glimmer of red. Musichetta gave a tiny, muted sound that made Bossuet pause and look up at the expression of joyful anticipation on her face. She reached out into the carton impatiently to remove the paper, and then Bossuet stared down at their shoes: hers were small enough to fit inside the other pair, both of them beautifully made, dark velvet shimmering slightly in the low light of the hallway.

Bossuet was the one to take them out, holding out Musichetta's shoes to her and setting the other pair down on the floor to step into.

"You put yours on first," Musichetta commanded. "I'll help you."

And she did, zipping them up and fastening the little clasps on the sides just tight enough not to hurt after Bossuet stepped into them. Bossuet slowly got up from the floor, wobbling a little. There was that feeling again, from the first day Bossuet had seen their flat, and Musichetta's shoes in particular. Bossuet had called it vertigo, then. Bossuet was willing to admit, by now, that it might be something else.

"Um. This might be a stupid question, but when I walk in these... do I set down the heel or the toes first?"

Musichetta frowned, then mimed walking in high heels for a second, the crease between her eyebrows deepening adorably. "I don't actually. Hang on." She put on her own pair while standing up like a professional, and took a couple of steps with a look of concentration on her face.

"No, I think you set down both pretty much at once," she concluded.

Bossuet took an experimental step forward, careful to let the heel and the toes connect with the floor simultaneously. The audible clicking sound the heel made on the tiled floor was enough to make Bossuet's heart skip, and then do a double-beat.

"This might not be good for my health, but it's definitely good for my soul," Bossuet stated, taking another step.

Joly chose that moment to peek out of his and Musichetta's room. "What is bad for your health?" he asked, and then his eyes zeroed in on Bossuet's feet, going round.

He swallowed audibly, not saying anything for a couple of seconds. It was almost enough to make Bossuet beat a hasty retreat to the Office, but then Joly cleared his throat and said, "I should tell you to always put your health first but these look amazing on you, so I will not do that and instead urge you to listen to your soul sometimes."

Bossuet felt a blush coming up, and took a few more wobbly steps to hopefully distract from it. It seemed to work, with both Musichetta and Joly's eyes glued to the size 13 burgundy high heels clicking against the floor in increasingly elegant steps. When Bossuet chanced a shoulder check, they were sharing what seemed to be a significant look, Musichetta's face glowing, Joly slightly wild-eyed.

Again, it didn't feel like a bad thing. For the first time, Bossuet allowed a thought that had been trying to worm its way to the forefront for a while: This might just work out.

Bossuet, still looking back, took another step, dangerously swayed to one side, and reached out to the wall to keep from falling.

"Wait, I'll help you," Musichetta called, rushing to Bossuet's side, heels click-click-clicking. She offered her hand, and Bossuet only hesitated a split-second before taking it.

They walked up and down the hall hand-in-hand, Musichetta offering helpful tips from time to time. Joly looked on from the doorway the whole time, his wide-eyed look slowly giving way to one of fondness. "Do you want to wear them to the meeting on Friday?" he asked eventually.

Bossuet faltered and came to a halt. "Do... you think they'll be okay with that?"

"Jehan wears high heels all the time, they won't even look twice," Musichetta said reassuringly.

"Well, they might look twice because these are some awesome shoes," Joly amended, and Bossuet grinned.

"That they are. Sure, you know what? Why not. Let's do that."

Musichetta and Joly gave a cheer, ran to Bossuet's sides, and both took a hand, as if on cue.

Bossuet took a breath, looked up as if to make sure this was actually all happening, and thought again: this might just work out.

When they arrived at the Musain that Friday, they were way beyond fashionably late for reasons that included a strike, the Parisian public transport being what it was, and a stray kitten that insisted on being petted for at least twenty minutes before vanishing below a hedge.

The Musain was bustling with people, and for the first time that evening, Bossuet felt slightly weird wearing the red boots.

Then Musichetta, two steps ahead, turned around and winked, and Bossuet forgot about it entirely.

Courfeyrac was standing near the entrance and spotted them the second they entered, breaking into a full sprint and throwing himself into Bossuet's arms. Bossuet stumbled back a few steps, but managed to keep both of them upright while returning the tight embrace, because you didn't waste a Courfeyhug on something as simple as physical safety. The man was born to hug people.

Courfeyrac looked down as if to check for injuries, and then his eyes lingered on Bossuet's shoes a second longer than necessary. Bossuet felt a hint of anxiety creep up, but Courfeyrac quenched it immediately by shouting, "Bossuet!! You came!! Enjolras! Combeferre! Come say hi to your new instant friend! Grantaire! Get over here, you will love each other! Wait a second, I'll be right back." And he left them standing there.

A good ten people started making their way over, and Bossuet would be worried if they didn't all look so damn delighted.

One guy with a wild halo of dark curls in particular was grinning with way too much gusto for someone who was only just being introduced to someone. And indeed, when he came up to shake Bossuet's hand, he said, "I'm Grantaire, hi, and I have to say, the story about the hedgehog, the bike, and the ambulance was the funniest I've ever had the pleasure of hearing, and Joly promised it was even funnier when you told it, so I can't wait to get wasted with you on a regular."

Bossuet grinned back, instantly intrigued. "Oh boy, if you loved that story, you will not be disappointed. Things just sort of start happening when I'm around, it's very entertaining for almost everyone involved. I can't promise that that will always include you, though."

"That's okay," Grantaire replied easily. "I can deal with failure, it's my default state."

"Don't scare off our newest member before the meeting has even started, Grantaire," said a tall, lanky black man with glasses mildly, and reached out to shake Bossuet's hand next. "I'm Combeferre, Courfeyrac has told me so much about you already. I'm glad you could finally make it."

"Oh, likewise," Bossuet replied. "I am loving it so far, and as much bad luck as I have in everything else, I have never been wrong about my friends. And I can't wait to be friends with all of you, you seem incredible."

"Thank you," said not Combeferre, but the blond man next to him, skipping the handshake and instead going for bisous immediately. "I'm Enjolras. It's good to have you."

There was a palpable honesty and a warmth behind the words that left no doubt as to who was the speaker of the group, and for a second, Bossuet felt almost bashful at the full force of it, heat high in the just-kissed cheeks.

Then, Courfeyrac returned, slinging a companionable arm around Bossuet's shoulders, and everything went back to normal. Bossuet gave Enjolras an apologetic smile for turning away so soon after such a heartfelt welcome, and focused on Courfeyrac, who held up a small box.

"We've got pronoun tags for new people, so nobody needs to point theirs out awkwardly all the time. If none of these work for you, we can make a new one, I have a sharpie," he said. He was already fumbling with a tag, trying to fasten it to his own shirt.

"Pronouns?" Bossuet replied.

Courfeyrac tilted the box so Bossuet could look inside, and there were name tags lying in it, except they didn't have names on them, but instead all said, elle, or il, or ille, or iel. He lifted his other hand to reveal a green tag that said, il.

It wasn't exactly the first time Bossuet had heard of people using different pronouns, but it was the first time anyone had waited for Bossuet to have a reaction to them, and now that the moment was there, Bossuet felt something so profound that it was hard to find a word for it.

Vertigo, Bossuet decided after a moment, sounded pretty accurate.

Like when you stood at the edge of a cliff not knowing if you'll fly or fall.

"Elle," Bossuet said, and felt her heart skip once, twice, and then dip into double speed, like a bird's. Soaring. Her fingers curled around the laminated edges of a bright red tag, and she looked up at her roommates ever-so-slowly.

"Oh fuck," Joly said, at the same time as Musichetta said, "there it is."

She smiled at Bossuet, and the pride in her expression eclipsed everything else for a couple of minutes.

Later, Bossuet would hardly remember anything of the meeting save for the faces: Joly's apologetic one eventually melting into a soft fondness Bossuet had only ever seen angled towards Musichetta, Enjolras's warm, welcoming smile, Courfeyrac's exuberance, Grantaire's unquestioning acceptance. Jehan's tears of joy.

There were so many things going on in her life at once, with the move still feeling so fresh, the maybe something with her roommates, the college situation, and all the new people she had just met and continued to meet throughout the evening. It felt mad and unpredictable, but her life had always been that, and for the first time, it felt like it might be mad and unpredictable and new in a good way.

She sat back and enjoyed the evening and fastened the tag to her shirt, and let everything happen as it did, and for a third time in a short while, she thought: this might just work out.

#bossuet #les mis #les miserables #joly #musichetta

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kentremendousblog · 7 years

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Tom and Lin-Manuel: An Appreciation/Jealous Rant

Every writer has a golden period – a chunk of time when her brain is ripest, when the veins he is tapping are the richest, when the ideas, big and small, spill out over the sides of the bucket instead of having to be patiently collected like drops of rain off a leaf. This is true for songwriters, playwrights, novelists, screenwriters, anyone who writes anything in any genre. Go look at John Hughes’s IMDb page and marvel at his golden period, which I would bookend as 1983-1990. It’s outrageous. He wrote Vacation, Mr. Mom, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, and Home Alone in eight years. Eight years?! That’s absurd.

But then look at his next 20 years. You won’t find one movie that is better than the worst one he wrote in those seven years. The vein ran dry. It always does. That’s just the deal.

Tom Petty’s golden period never ended. Or, at least, the silver periods on either side of his golden period were seemingly infinite. No matter where you think he peaked -- Full Moon Fever, or Wildflowers, or Damn the Torpedoes -- the decades on either side were wonderful. He was great from the moment he released his first album in 1977 to the day he died last month. For forty years he wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and the songs he wrote were good or great or amazing.

Tom Petty wrote “Breakdown” and “American Girl” in 1977. He wrote “You Don’t Know How it Feels” seventeen years later, in 1994. He wrote “You Got Lucky” in 1982, “King’s Highway” in 1992, “The Last DJ” in 2002. He wrote “I Won’t Back Down,” “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” Free Fallin’,” “Love is a Long Road,” “A Face in the Crowd,” Yer So Bad,” and “The Apartment Song,” and “Depending on You,” all in 1989, and they were all on the same album, and that’s absurd.

He wrote “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” in 1981 and “Big Weekend” in 2006. He wrote every song on Wildflowers – and they are all great – in or around 1994. He wrote fifty other great songs I haven’t named yet, like “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and “Jammin Me.” He wrote great songs you've heard a million times, and great songs you've maybe never heard, like "Billy the Kid" (1999) and "Walls" (1996) which was buried on the soundtrack to She's the One. He took a break from the Heartbreakers and casually released “End of the Line” and “Handle With Care” and “She’s My Baby” with the Traveling Wilburys in 1989-90. He wrote “Refugee” in 1980 and “I Should Have Known It” in 2010. Is there any rock and roll songwriter alive who wrote two songs that good, 30 years apart? (Paul McCartney wrote “Hey Jude” in 1968, and only 12 years later he wrote “Wonderful Christmas Time,” which is so bad it nearly retroactively undid “Hey Jude.”)

He wrote about rock and roll things, like ’62 Cadillacs, getting out of this town, and dancing with Mary Jane. He wrote about love and loss and heartbreak. He wrote legitimately funny jokes, and moribund memories, and personal narratives, and imaginative flights of fancy. One of his characters calls his father his “old man” and it somehow isn’t cheesy. He was from Florida and California and wrote about both of them, and every time I’m on Ventura Boulevard I think of vampires, because the images he wrote are indelible.

Petty didn’t just write songs directed at women, like most rock stars. He wrote about women, and he wrote for women, and he wrote with women. He treated the women in his songs as lovingly and respectfully as he treated the men. He cared about them as much, he spent as much time thinking about them, and he liked them as much, and all of that is rare.

He wrote simply, but not boringly. He made his characters three-dimensional, somehow, in a matter of seconds. There’s a famous (probably apocryphal) story about Hemingway bragging he could write an entire novel in six words, then writing: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I prefer the 18-word novel Petty wrote as the first verse to “Down South” –

Headed back down south Gonna see my daddy's mistress Gonna buy back her forgiveness Pay off every witness

When I was working on Parks and Recreation, whenever we needed a song to score an important moment in Leslie Knope’s life, we chose a Tom Petty song. It started with “American Girl,” when her biggest career project came to fruition. It was “Wildflowers” when she said goodbye to her best friend. It was “End of the Line” at the moment the show ended. For the seven seasons of our show, Tom Petty was the writer we trusted to explain how our main character was feeling, because he wrote so much, so well, for so long.

*******

It seems like a joke, Hamilton -- a joke in a TV show where one of the characters is a struggling New York actor, and is always dragging his friends to his terrible plays. Like Joey in Friends. There’s an episode of Friends where Joey is in a terrible musical called like Freud!, about Sigmund Freud, and you get to see some of it, and it’s predictably terrible. Freud! the musical is arguably a better idea than Hamilton the musical.

I’m far from the first person to say this -- I’m probably somewhere around the millionth person to write about Hamilton, and the maybe 500,000th to make this particular point, but it needs to be said -- a hip-hop Broadway musical about the founding fathers is an astoundingly terrible idea. Lin-Manuel Miranda should never have written it. As soon as he started to write it, he should’ve said to himself, “What the fuck am I doing?!” and stopped. And after he got halfway through, he should’ve junked it, gotten really drunk, and moved on with his life, and made his wife and friends swear to never mention the weird six months where he was trying to write a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton. I literally guarantee you that when Lin-Manuel Miranda first told his friends what he was writing, every one of them reacted with at best a frozen smile, and at worst a horrified recoiling. Some of them might have been outwardly encouraging – “sounds awesome bud! Go get 'em!” But then later, alone, they would call each other and say What the fuck is he doing?

There is a moment, in Hamilton, when what you are watching overwhelms you. (It’s not the same moment for everyone, but most everyone has one, I suspect.) It’s the moment when the enormity, the complexity, the meaning of it, the entirety of it, overpowers you, and you realize that what you are experiencing is new – new both in your specific life, and new, like, on Earth. The first time I saw it, that moment was a line in the middle of “Yorktown.” Hamilton sang the line And so the American experiment begins / With my friends all scattered to the winds, and I burst into tears in a way I hadn’t since I was 10 and a baseball went through a guy’s legs in the World Series. Something about how casually he says that – And so the American experiment begins – just settled over me, like a collapsing tent, and this thing I was watching wasn’t in front of me, it was everywhere around me, and it was exhilarating and transformative.

(If I could put this part in a footnote, I would, but I don’t know how to, so: I should mention that I am very far from a musical theater aficionado. I have seen maybe eight musicals in my life. Not only did I not expect to cry, hard, during Hamilton, I did not expect to enjoy it. I saw it like a week after it opened on Broadway, kind of on a whim, knew nothing about it, and the last thing I said to my wife, as the lights went down, was: “We’ll leave at intermission.”)

The second time I saw it, that moment came much earlier (I knew what I was getting into, this time, so I was more ready to be subsumed). It came barely three minutes in, when the entire cast of the show, in a piece of choreography that can best be referred to as “badass,” all walk down to the very front of the stage and stand, shoulder to shoulder, and sing very loudly about how Alexander Hamilton never learned to take his time. The cast has, to this point, trickled on stage, slowly, one by one, telling you Hamilton’s origin story, and then suddenly there they all are, all of them -- maybe 20? 50? It seems like 1000? – as close to the audience as they can get, and they are every size and ethnicity and gender, and their voices are loud, and I thought to myself, oh my God, this is a cast of people descended from every nation on Earth, all singing about the foundations of the American experience, and yes I “knew” that, intellectually, but holy shit, now that I see them all, I know it, like in my stomach, I understand it, and what a thing that is.

The third time I saw Hamilton, that moment was during “It’s Quiet Uptown,” when this enormous, sprawling, improbable, otherworldly, multi-ethnic, historical, art tornado presses pause on all of its historical-cultural-ethno-sociological-artistic investigations, and spends four and a half spare minutes with a couple who are grieving an unimaginable tragedy. Specifically, it was the lines

Forgiveness Can you imagine? Forgiveness Can you imagine?

What a thing to do, for your characters -- to give them four and a half minutes in the middle of an enormous, sprawling, historical swirl, to just be sad. What a piece of writing that is.

(Again, should be a footnote, but: as long as I’m talking about writers here, I should point out that if the late Harris Wittels were alive, he would, at this moment, text me and hit me with a “humblebrag” for writing about how I have seen Hamilton three times, and he would be right. Miss you Harris!)

In the hundreds of hours of my life I have spent thinking about Hamilton since I first saw it – far more hours than any other single piece of art I have ever experienced – I have revisited that same thought over and over: he never should’ve written it. It was an absurd thing to do. It took him a year to write the title song, then another year to write the second song, and how did he not give up when two years had gone by and he’d written two songs? He must’ve known in his heart it needed to be a 50-song, 2 1/2-hour enterprise, and he had two songs after two years, and he kept going. How did he keep going? I've been trying to write this blog post about two writers I admire for different reasons since the week Tom Petty died, and I’ve almost given up five times.

At this point, the entire musical is that "moment" for me. It's the whole thing, now – the thing that overwhelms me is the whole thing. The conception of it, the writing of it, the rewriting of it. The music and the motifs and the themes and the threads and the dramatic shape and the characters and their inner lives, and the eagle-eye writer’s view it took to keep all of that in his head, all of it, the whole time. The writing of it. The utterly impossible writing of it.

#writing #hamilton #tompetty #lin-manuel miranda

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supershanzykhan · 3 years

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How to choose your wedding party

Courtesy:Farmhouse Event Planner in LahoreOther categories choosing your wedding party may seem challenging and overwhelming at first, but a supportive team that is excited to see you tie the knot on your big day

Content:

· Steps

· Social questions and answers

· Tips

· Warnings

Other categories

Choosing your wedding party may seem challenging and overwhelming at first, but you will end up with a supportive team that is excited to see you tie the knot on your big day. To ensure that you have the best experience by choosing your wedding party, you should choose a wedding party full of positive, loving people like your family or close friends.

Steps

Method 1 of 3: Choosing your wedding party

Make a list of all possible options. Sit down with your partner and make a list of all the people who might be at your wedding party. Include who you like, who your partner wants, who you think you should call, and who you want to invite. Think about the first options for high school friends from the family of new friends you have created in the professional world. Expert tip

An event planning company that specializes in weddings. His team has been planning beautiful, elaborate weddings, social and corporate events for over 10 years, taking care of details like floral design, decorations, staff and catering.

Consider the immediate family. Your siblings will be your siblings forever. Even if you are closer to your best work friend than your brother now, your brother will always be your brother. Marriages are mainly about family; You should seriously consider choosing your siblings for your wedding party. Leaving your siblings can also cause some unpleasant and unnecessary family drama.

Don’t forget about your partner’s family. Even though you do a lot of wedding planning, keep in mind that your partner’s family has the same play as yours. Your partner has the same responsibilities as you do to siblings and friends. If your fiancé asks you to call your sister a bridesmaid, do it. A wedding party is a combination of people who are supposed to love and support both of you.

Choose a bridesmaid and groom for approximately every 50 guests. This is not a difficult and fast rule, but it is a general guideline given to most people planning weddings. Marriage of 300 persons with 1 bride or 75 persons with 10 grooms may seem random. Use this rule as a guide to reduce your wedding guest list.

· However, do not feel limited in adhering to traditional gender equality (equal spouses and grooms). You can have one more than the other and place them on different sides of the altar.

· Do not forget about the size of your altar! If you are getting married somewhere with limited space, make sure it can fit comfortably into your wedding reception.

Give them a head start before they are invited to your wedding party. Before posting official invitations or on social media about your wedding, ask your potential spouses, grooms and other wedding partners if they would like to be at the wedding. They may have other obligations, may be afraid to stand out in public or may not want to be at your wedding. That's right. Give them a chance to say “no” and don’t ask them to answer you as soon as you ask. Let them think about it. Being at a wedding party can be financially challenging and a decision that requires a lot of time.

Set expectations for your wedding party responsibilities. Do you need your bridesmaids every second to reassure and help you, or is the person who only needs her grooms for the wedding day? In any case, you need to know their responsibilities before, during, and after your wedding reception. Being at a wedding party is a commitment, and you need to know all of their responsibilities before your members agree to be at the wedding.

· Think about where your wedding party lives and what happens in their lives. Your friend from all over the country may not be able to help you collect flower arrangements, but she can make a week-long trip to go shopping for clothes with you.

Choose playful, supportive people who want to be at the wedding. At your wedding party, you want to include people who are both positive and supportive and loving, both you and your partner. You should not choose anyone you suspect is dramatic or demanding — this is your day. Your entire wedding party should be filled with people who are excited about your wedding; is annoying or for your friend who is jealous and angry about you.

Method 2 of 3: Selecting the maid and the best man

Take care of your close friends and family. When you love everyone at your wedding party, it’s hard to choose a respectable maid and the best man. To all of these people, your esteemed maid is the best person and you and your partner should be the people who feel the closest.

· However, no one can criticize you for choosing a family member. If you can’t choose between your two best friends, you can choose your sister to spread potential tension.

· Even if you are one of your spouse’s esteemed maids, don’t think you should choose her as your esteemed maid. This is your wedding and in the end the choice is yours.

Choose responsible people as your honorable maid and best man. The honorable maid and the best man are usually responsible for planning events such as wedding showers and bachelor parties. They are also responsible for planning and organizing for you and making sure you have everything you need on your wedding day.

· If you want your sister to be your esteemed maid, but she is too busy or erratic, you can ask someone else at the wedding party to plan your wedding shower or your bachelorette party. The Vice-Chancellor will be honored with extra duty and will want to help in any way she can.

Outline your responsibilities to your esteemed maid and best man. Before you hire your esteemed maid or best man for work, make sure they know what they are responsible for. Many will be excited to plan your bachelorette party for you, but siblings at graduate school or friends across the country may not have the logical time or ability to do these things for you.

· Converse with your esteemed maid or best man where you outline responsibilities for the position. Whatever the responsibilities, make sure the person is excited.

Method 3 of 3: Consider other aspects of the wedding party

Notice having a small wedding party. Think in advance about possible conflicts and drama. Factor in the family dynamics of you and your fiance. Make no mistake that this decision is about you and your partner - if you want to have a small wedding party, have a small wedding party. Do not feel obligated to call everyone you expect to be invited or call everyone your parents want you to call. Remember this is your day. There is no right or wrong way to keep a wedding party. Expert tip

"If you have a big wedding party, but you don't want everyone on the altar, you can make them all sit in the second or third row."

Don’t feel limited by tradition. If you are a bride, your "honorable maid" may be a man or vice versa. You may have two respectable maids. You may have a maid and a respectable parent. You can’t have a better man. There is no wrong way to do your wedding, so you need to realize what is right for your particular situation and marriage.

Think about the budget. Budget is an important part of any wedding and wedding reception. Do your bridesmaids pay for their clothes? Are grooms responsible for renting their own ducks? Can you help with any part of the funds? Who will pay for the bachelorette party? Think about these issues with your partner and make them clear to your wedding party. They need to know exactly what they have to pay before signing up as members at the wedding party.

Think about other roles. Do you like users? People to hand over shows? Ring bearer? A flower girl? Does anyone want to do a reading at the ceremony? All of these other roles should be decided and determined by you and your partner. Think twice before you give people jobs like being a user or handing over projects - this can be considered an advantage rather than an honor.

· Do not think you have to wear a ring or a flower girl. Only get these positions if you know any kids who want this job.

Social questions and answers

How many people should stand next to the bride, how many should stand next to the groom? The number of people at the wedding party will vary as well as the arrangement of the wedding party around the bride and groom. Generally, there are equal people on the bride and groom's sides of the altar. Usually men and women are separated, but they don’t have to be.

· Can the bride tell her friends to attend the wedding? Usually, the wedding party is for close friends and the bride's family only. Spouses usually do not invite their friends to be part of someone else's wedding.

· how old should the Vice President / Vice President be? Any age!

· how many vice presidents are there more? It depends on the size of your wedding. Wedding planners usually recommend having a bridesmaid for every 50 people attending the wedding.

· My cousin asked 2 flower girls. How do I walk them down the aisle? One goes to the right and the other to the left.

Tips

· A bridesmaid does not have to be a woman or a groom does not have to be a man. If the bride's best friend is a man, she should think about asking him to be his bride. A woman is the same as a groom girl.

· Just because someone asked you to stand up at his wedding doesn’t mean you should kindly return. Just ask if you really want them to be in your wedding.

Warnings

· If you choose to have ring bearers or flower girls, keep in mind that they will not fully cooperate during the wedding. Younger children may have to sit with parents or family members as soon as they walk down the aisle.

Courtesy:Farmhouse Event Planner in Lahore

#farmhouse farmhousestyle farmhousedecor farmhousefresh farmhousegoals eventservices eventsmanagement eventsvenue eventsdecor eventsetup

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wokeinmemphis-blog · 4 years

Text

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice dies

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the history-making jurist, feminist icon and national treasure, has died, aged 87.

Ginsburg became only the second woman ever to serve as a justice on the nation’s highest court.

She struggled against blatant sexism throughout her career as she climbed to the pinnacle of her profession.

A lifelong advocate of gender equality, she was fond of joking that there would be enough women on the nine-seat Supreme Court “when there are nine”.

She did not let up in her twilight years, remaining a scathing dissenter on a conservative-tilting bench, even while her periodic health scares left liberal America on edge.

Despite maintaining a modest public profile, like most top judges, Ginsburg inadvertently became not just a celebrity, but a pop-culture heroine.

She may have stood an impish 5ft, but Ginsburg will be remembered as a legal colossus.

Image copyright Alex Wong/Getty Images

Modest beginnings

She was born to Jewish immigrant parents in the Flatbush neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York City, in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression. Her mother, Celia Bader, died of cancer the day before Ginsburg left high school.

She attended Cornell University, where she met Martin “Marty” Ginsburg on a blind date, kindling a romance that spanned almost six decades until his death in 2010.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remembered

“Meeting Marty was by far the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me,” Ginsburg once said, adding that the man who would become her husband “was the first boy I ever knew who cared that I had a brain”.

The couple married shortly after Ginsburg’s graduation in 1954 and they had a daughter, Jane, the following year. While she was pregnant, Ginsburg was demoted in her job at a social security office – discrimination against pregnant women was still legal in the 1950s. The experience led her to conceal her second pregnancy before she gave birth to her son, James, in 1965.

Image copyright Bettmann

Image caption Ginsburg in 1977

In 1956, Ginsburg became one of nine women accepted to Harvard Law School, out of a class of about 500, where the dean famously asked that his female students tell him how they could justify taking the place of a man at his school.

When Marty, also a Harvard Law alumnus, took a job as a tax lawyer in New York, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School to complete her third and final year, becoming the first woman to work at both colleges’ law reviews.

‘Teacher’ to male justices

Despite finishing top of her class, Ginsburg did not receive a single job offer after graduation.

“Not a law firm in the entire city of New York would employ me,” she later said. “I struck out on three grounds: I was Jewish, a woman and a mother.”

She wound up on a project studying civil procedure in Sweden before becoming a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she taught some of the first women and law classes.

Image copyright Alex Wong/Getty Images

“The women’s movement came alive at the end of the 60s,” she said to NPR. “There I was, a law school professor with time that I could devote to moving along this change.”

In 1971, Ginsburg made her first successful argument before the Supreme Court, when she filed the lead brief in Reed v Reed, which examined whether men could be automatically preferred over women as estate executors.

“In very recent years, a new appreciation of women’s place has been generated in the United States,” the brief states. “Activated by feminists of both sexes, courts and legislatures have begun to recognise the claim of women to full membership in the class ‘persons’ entitled to due process guarantees of life and liberty and the equal protection of the laws.”

The court agreed with Ginsburg, marking the first time the Supreme Court had struck down a law because of gender-based discrimination.

Image copyright Pool/Getty Images

In 1972, Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That same year, Ginsburg became the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School.

She was soon the ACLU’s general counsel, launching a series of gender-discrimination cases. Six of these brought her before the Supreme Court, five of which she won.

She compared her role to that of a “kindergarten teacher”, explaining gender discrimination to the all-male justices.

Her approach was cautious and highly strategic. She favoured incrementalism, thinking it wise to dismantle sexist laws and policies one by one, rather than run the risk of asking the Supreme Court to outlaw all rules that treat men and women unequally.

Cognisant of her exclusively male audience on the court, Ginsburg’s clients were often men. In 1975, she argued the case of a young widower who was denied benefits after his wife died in childbirth.

Image copyright SOPA Images/Getty Images

“His case was the perfect example of how gender-based discrimination hurts everyone,” Ginsburg said.

She later said leading the legal side of the women’s movement during this period – decades before joining the Supreme Court – counts as her greatest professional work.

“I had the good fortune to be alive in the 1960s, then, and continuing through the 1970s,” she said. “For the first time in history it became possible to urge before the courts successfully that equal justice under law requires all arms of government to regard women as persons equal in stature to men.”

In 1980, Ginsburg was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as part of President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to diversify federal courts.

Though Ginsburg was often portrayed as a liberal firebrand, her days on the appeals court were marked by moderation.

She earned a reputation as a centrist, voting with conservatives many times and against, for example, re-hearing the discrimination case of a sailor who said he had been discharged from the US Navy for being gay.

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

Image caption Ginsberg with Senators Daniel Moynihan (left) and Joe Biden in 1993

She was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Clinton after a lengthy search process. Ginsburg was the second woman ever confirmed to that bench, following Sandra Day O’Connor, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Among Ginsburg’s most significant, early cases was United States v Virginia, which struck down the men-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute.

While Virginia “serves the state’s sons, it makes no provision whatever for her daughters. That is not equal protection”, Ginsburg wrote for the court’s majority. No law or policy should deny women “full citizenship stature – equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.”

Image copyright Jeffrey Markowitz/Getty Images

Image caption Ginsburg at her Senate confirmation hearing

During her time on the bench, Justice Ginsburg moved noticeably to the left. She served as a counterbalance to the court itself, which, with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh by President Donald Trump, slanted in favour of conservative justices.

Her dissents were forceful – occasionally biting – and Ginsburg did not shy away from criticising her colleagues’ opinions.

In 2013, objecting to the court’s decision to strike down a significant portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, Ginsburg wrote: “The Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decision making.”

Image copyright Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Image caption The US Supreme Court justices pose for their official portrait in November 2018

In 2015, Ginsburg sided with the majority on two landmark cases – both massive victories for American progressives. She was one of six justices to uphold a crucial component of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. In the second, Obergefell v Hodges, she sided with the 5-4 majority, legalising same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

‘Best friend and biggest booster’

As Ginsburg’s legal career soared, her personal life was anchored by marriage to Marty.

Their relationship reflected a gender parity that was ahead of its time. The couple shared the childcare and housework, and Marty did virtually all of the cooking.

“I learned very early on in our marriage that Ruth was a fairly terrible cook and, for lack of interest, unlikely to improve,” he said in a 1996 speech.

Professionally, Marty was a relentless champion of his wife. Clinton officials said it was his tireless lobbying that brought Ginsburg’s name to the shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees in 1993.

He reportedly told a friend that the most important thing he did in his own life “is to enable Ruth to do what she has done”.

After her confirmation Ginsburg thanked Marty, “who has been, since our teenage years, my best friend and biggest booster”.

Image copyright Mark Reinstein/Getty Images

Image caption Marty Ginsburg holds the Bible for his wife as she is sworn in as Supreme Court Justice

In his final weeks, facing his own battle with cancer, Marty wrote a letter to his wife saying that other than parents and kids, “you are the only person I have loved in my life.

“I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell.”

He died in June 2010 after 56 years of marriage.

The next morning Ginsburg was on the bench at the Supreme Court to read an opinion on the final day of the term “because [Marty] would have wanted it”, she later told the New Yorker magazine.

‘I will live’

Ginsburg had five major run-ins with cancer herself.

Justice O’Connor, who had breast cancer in the 1980s, was said to have suggested that Ginsburg schedule chemotherapy for Fridays so she could use the weekend to recover for oral arguments.

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

It worked: Ginsburg only missed oral arguments twice because of illness.

Ginsburg said she also followed the advice of opera singer Marilyn Horne, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2005.

“She said, ‘I will live,'” Ginsburg recalled to NPR. “Not that, ‘I hope I live’, or, ‘I want to live’, but, ‘I will live.'”

Her longevity brought immense relief to liberal America, which fretted that another vacancy on the court would allow its conservative majority to become even more ascendant during the Trump era.

‘The Notorious RBG’

Toward the end of her life, Ginsburg became a national icon. Due in part to her withering dissents, a young law student created a Tumblr account dedicated to Ginsburg called Notorious RBG – a nod to the late rapper The Notorious BIG.

The account introduced Ginsburg to a new generation of young feminists and propelled her to that rarest of distinctions for a judge: cult figure.

The Notorious RBG was the subject of a documentary, an award-winning biopic and countless bestselling novels. She inspired Saturday Night Live skits and had her likeness plastered on mugs and T-shirts.

“It was beyond my wildest imagination that I would one day become the Notorious RBG,” she said. “I am now 86 years old and yet people of all ages want to take their picture with me.”

Image copyright Allison Shelley/Getty Images

Every aspect of her life was dissected and mythologised, from her workout routine to her love of hair scrunchies.

Asked by NPR in 2019 if she had any regrets given the challenges she had faced in life, Ginsburg’s supreme self-belief shone through.

“I do think I was born under a very bright star,” she replied.

Reporting by Holly Honderich and Jessica Lussenhop

The article was originally published here! Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice dies

0 notes

arcadeparade-blog1 · 4 years

Text

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice dies

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the history-making jurist, feminist icon and national treasure, has died, aged 87.

Ginsburg became only the second woman ever to serve as a justice on the nation’s highest court.

She struggled against blatant sexism throughout her career as she climbed to the pinnacle of her profession.

A lifelong advocate of gender equality, she was fond of joking that there would be enough women on the nine-seat Supreme Court “when there are nine”.

She did not let up in her twilight years, remaining a scathing dissenter on a conservative-tilting bench, even while her periodic health scares left liberal America on edge.

Despite maintaining a modest public profile, like most top judges, Ginsburg inadvertently became not just a celebrity, but a pop-culture heroine.

She may have stood an impish 5ft, but Ginsburg will be remembered as a legal colossus.

Image copyright Alex Wong/Getty Images

Modest beginnings

She attended Cornell University, where she met Martin “Marty” Ginsburg on a blind date, kindling a romance that spanned almost six decades until his death in 2010.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remembered

Image copyright Bettmann

Image caption Ginsburg in 1977

‘Teacher’ to male justices

Despite finishing top of her class, Ginsburg did not receive a single job offer after graduation.

“Not a law firm in the entire city of New York would employ me,” she later said. “I struck out on three grounds: I was Jewish, a woman and a mother.”

She wound up on a project studying civil procedure in Sweden before becoming a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she taught some of the first women and law classes.

Image copyright Alex Wong/Getty Images

“The women’s movement came alive at the end of the 60s,” she said to NPR. “There I was, a law school professor with time that I could devote to moving along this change.”

The court agreed with Ginsburg, marking the first time the Supreme Court had struck down a law because of gender-based discrimination.

Image copyright Pool/Getty Images

In 1972, Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That same year, Ginsburg became the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School.

She was soon the ACLU’s general counsel, launching a series of gender-discrimination cases. Six of these brought her before the Supreme Court, five of which she won.

She compared her role to that of a “kindergarten teacher”, explaining gender discrimination to the all-male justices.

Image copyright SOPA Images/Getty Images

“His case was the perfect example of how gender-based discrimination hurts everyone,” Ginsburg said.

She later said leading the legal side of the women’s movement during this period – decades before joining the Supreme Court – counts as her greatest professional work.

In 1980, Ginsburg was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as part of President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to diversify federal courts.

Though Ginsburg was often portrayed as a liberal firebrand, her days on the appeals court were marked by moderation.

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

Image caption Ginsberg with Senators Daniel Moynihan (left) and Joe Biden in 1993

Among Ginsburg’s most significant, early cases was United States v Virginia, which struck down the men-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute.

Image copyright Jeffrey Markowitz/Getty Images

Image caption Ginsburg at her Senate confirmation hearing

Her dissents were forceful – occasionally biting – and Ginsburg did not shy away from criticising her colleagues’ opinions.

Image copyright Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Image caption The US Supreme Court justices pose for their official portrait in November 2018

‘Best friend and biggest booster’

As Ginsburg’s legal career soared, her personal life was anchored by marriage to Marty.

Their relationship reflected a gender parity that was ahead of its time. The couple shared the childcare and housework, and Marty did virtually all of the cooking.

“I learned very early on in our marriage that Ruth was a fairly terrible cook and, for lack of interest, unlikely to improve,” he said in a 1996 speech.

He reportedly told a friend that the most important thing he did in his own life “is to enable Ruth to do what she has done”.

After her confirmation Ginsburg thanked Marty, “who has been, since our teenage years, my best friend and biggest booster”.

Image copyright Mark Reinstein/Getty Images

Image caption Marty Ginsburg holds the Bible for his wife as she is sworn in as Supreme Court Justice

In his final weeks, facing his own battle with cancer, Marty wrote a letter to his wife saying that other than parents and kids, “you are the only person I have loved in my life.

“I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell.”

He died in June 2010 after 56 years of marriage.

The next morning Ginsburg was on the bench at the Supreme Court to read an opinion on the final day of the term “because [Marty] would have wanted it”, she later told the New Yorker magazine.

‘I will live’

Ginsburg had five major run-ins with cancer herself.

Justice O’Connor, who had breast cancer in the 1980s, was said to have suggested that Ginsburg schedule chemotherapy for Fridays so she could use the weekend to recover for oral arguments.

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

It worked: Ginsburg only missed oral arguments twice because of illness.

Ginsburg said she also followed the advice of opera singer Marilyn Horne, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2005.

“She said, ‘I will live,'” Ginsburg recalled to NPR. “Not that, ‘I hope I live’, or, ‘I want to live’, but, ‘I will live.'”

Her longevity brought immense relief to liberal America, which fretted that another vacancy on the court would allow its conservative majority to become even more ascendant during the Trump era.

‘The Notorious RBG’

The account introduced Ginsburg to a new generation of young feminists and propelled her to that rarest of distinctions for a judge: cult figure.

“It was beyond my wildest imagination that I would one day become the Notorious RBG,” she said. “I am now 86 years old and yet people of all ages want to take their picture with me.”

Image copyright Allison Shelley/Getty Images

Every aspect of her life was dissected and mythologised, from her workout routine to her love of hair scrunchies.

Asked by NPR in 2019 if she had any regrets given the challenges she had faced in life, Ginsburg’s supreme self-belief shone through.

“I do think I was born under a very bright star,” she replied.

Reporting by Holly Honderich and Jessica Lussenhop

The article was originally published here! Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice dies

0 notes

redroses879-blog · 4 years

Text

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice dies

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the history-making jurist, feminist icon and national treasure, has died, aged 87.

Ginsburg became only the second woman ever to serve as a justice on the nation’s highest court.

She struggled against blatant sexism throughout her career as she climbed to the pinnacle of her profession.

A lifelong advocate of gender equality, she was fond of joking that there would be enough women on the nine-seat Supreme Court “when there are nine”.

She did not let up in her twilight years, remaining a scathing dissenter on a conservative-tilting bench, even while her periodic health scares left liberal America on edge.

Despite maintaining a modest public profile, like most top judges, Ginsburg inadvertently became not just a celebrity, but a pop-culture heroine.

She may have stood an impish 5ft, but Ginsburg will be remembered as a legal colossus.

Image copyright Alex Wong/Getty Images

Modest beginnings

She attended Cornell University, where she met Martin “Marty” Ginsburg on a blind date, kindling a romance that spanned almost six decades until his death in 2010.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remembered

Image copyright Bettmann

Image caption Ginsburg in 1977

‘Teacher’ to male justices

Despite finishing top of her class, Ginsburg did not receive a single job offer after graduation.

“Not a law firm in the entire city of New York would employ me,” she later said. “I struck out on three grounds: I was Jewish, a woman and a mother.”

She wound up on a project studying civil procedure in Sweden before becoming a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she taught some of the first women and law classes.

Image copyright Alex Wong/Getty Images

“The women’s movement came alive at the end of the 60s,” she said to NPR. “There I was, a law school professor with time that I could devote to moving along this change.”

The court agreed with Ginsburg, marking the first time the Supreme Court had struck down a law because of gender-based discrimination.

Image copyright Pool/Getty Images

In 1972, Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That same year, Ginsburg became the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School.

She was soon the ACLU’s general counsel, launching a series of gender-discrimination cases. Six of these brought her before the Supreme Court, five of which she won.

She compared her role to that of a “kindergarten teacher”, explaining gender discrimination to the all-male justices.

Image copyright SOPA Images/Getty Images

“His case was the perfect example of how gender-based discrimination hurts everyone,” Ginsburg said.

She later said leading the legal side of the women’s movement during this period – decades before joining the Supreme Court – counts as her greatest professional work.

In 1980, Ginsburg was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as part of President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to diversify federal courts.

Though Ginsburg was often portrayed as a liberal firebrand, her days on the appeals court were marked by moderation.

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

Image caption Ginsberg with Senators Daniel Moynihan (left) and Joe Biden in 1993

Among Ginsburg’s most significant, early cases was United States v Virginia, which struck down the men-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute.

Image copyright Jeffrey Markowitz/Getty Images

Image caption Ginsburg at her Senate confirmation hearing

Her dissents were forceful – occasionally biting – and Ginsburg did not shy away from criticising her colleagues’ opinions.

Image copyright Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Image caption The US Supreme Court justices pose for their official portrait in November 2018

‘Best friend and biggest booster’

As Ginsburg’s legal career soared, her personal life was anchored by marriage to Marty.

Their relationship reflected a gender parity that was ahead of its time. The couple shared the childcare and housework, and Marty did virtually all of the cooking.

“I learned very early on in our marriage that Ruth was a fairly terrible cook and, for lack of interest, unlikely to improve,” he said in a 1996 speech.

He reportedly told a friend that the most important thing he did in his own life “is to enable Ruth to do what she has done”.

After her confirmation Ginsburg thanked Marty, “who has been, since our teenage years, my best friend and biggest booster”.

Image copyright Mark Reinstein/Getty Images

Image caption Marty Ginsburg holds the Bible for his wife as she is sworn in as Supreme Court Justice

In his final weeks, facing his own battle with cancer, Marty wrote a letter to his wife saying that other than parents and kids, “you are the only person I have loved in my life.

“I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell.”

He died in June 2010 after 56 years of marriage.

The next morning Ginsburg was on the bench at the Supreme Court to read an opinion on the final day of the term “because [Marty] would have wanted it”, she later told the New Yorker magazine.

‘I will live’

Ginsburg had five major run-ins with cancer herself.

Justice O’Connor, who had breast cancer in the 1980s, was said to have suggested that Ginsburg schedule chemotherapy for Fridays so she could use the weekend to recover for oral arguments.

Image copyright The Washington Post/Getty Images

It worked: Ginsburg only missed oral arguments twice because of illness.

Ginsburg said she also followed the advice of opera singer Marilyn Horne, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2005.

“She said, ‘I will live,'” Ginsburg recalled to NPR. “Not that, ‘I hope I live’, or, ‘I want to live’, but, ‘I will live.'”

Her longevity brought immense relief to liberal America, which fretted that another vacancy on the court would allow its conservative majority to become even more ascendant during the Trump era.

‘The Notorious RBG’

The account introduced Ginsburg to a new generation of young feminists and propelled her to that rarest of distinctions for a judge: cult figure.

“It was beyond my wildest imagination that I would one day become the Notorious RBG,” she said. “I am now 86 years old and yet people of all ages want to take their picture with me.”

Image copyright Allison Shelley/Getty Images

Every aspect of her life was dissected and mythologised, from her workout routine to her love of hair scrunchies.

Asked by NPR in 2019 if she had any regrets given the challenges she had faced in life, Ginsburg’s supreme self-belief shone through.

“I do think I was born under a very bright star,” she replied.

Reporting by Holly Honderich and Jessica Lussenhop

The article was originally published here! Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice dies

0 notes