This time around we have time and wanted to a) see how people really live outside of a ticket-seller’s booth and b) pick up a different kind of story or two. I had been working a desk job and wanted to get out from under the computer and air conditioning. Imagine having decisions that are no more taxing than whether to have a beer or a shandy over lunch?! Plus we (I) don’t have much (any) money and we (I) suck at budgeting. With these points in mind, a chat with travel-y friends and a clickity-click of the mouse led us to www.wwoof.org. Why, hello there Willing Workers On Organic Farms! You want us to work for 5-6 hours a day, 6 days a week in exchange for food and accommodation? To put the savings account on hold and providing a cracking story to tell at the next youth hostel? No worries, so where’s the dotted line?
Tell stories by choice. Tell stories of life as it should be. It is radical to speak.
You may have privileges you don’t realize you have. That’s what this site is all about.
This is so, so good that it hurts my feelings to chop it up for tumblr. Please read the whole thing at the source. (via smart-tart) (via guerrillamamamedicine) (via loveandzombies)
In fact — and this is for the white boys in the audience, mostly, but I trust you’ll all get the point — you should think about it in the same way you do “the n-word.” Look at that! I can’t even write it out, as I am theoretically talking about it! And this is a good thing. Mainly, what I am saying here, is that maybe one day, you will think of these words as the “w-word” and the “s-word” and you’ll be uncomfortable ever using them at all. You’ve just got to work at it."
Growing up, some of the men in our lives were the best examples of feminists we could have asked for. Particularly a certain Leonard Commet Krill, English teacher, step-father, and role model to many. Well, this weekend he blew our minds with this video, which, it turns out, he’s been using with his high school students for years.
The video looks at the Whorfian Hypothesis—the idea that languages affect our understanding of the world in such a way that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it—and how it applies to the way we speak (and consequently think) about gender.
We wish we could get Leonard to give the presentation himself, because he does it so well, but here’s the gist: English has evolved so that linguistically, women are clearly a subset of men. Where humankind was once “humanus,” now it is just “man.” And where men and women were once “masculus” and “feminus,” now we are, obviously, “men” and “women.”
And file under, DUH, why didn’t we ever think about this, Leonard points out that upon marriage, we are pronounced “man and wife.” The husband keeps being a “man,” while we become “wives.” Likewise, words once associated with female power are now derogatory: mistress (formerly the feminine mister), witch (female wizard), madam (female sir), and so on….
Leonard says that his students—both male and female—immediately get all of this. We’re bursting with pride that our dear man is setting off so many click moments for his young students. And also sorta wishing we’d studied linguistics.
And so, in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady and I get to talking about Internet harassment of the you-women-ought-to-employ-your-mouths-for-dick-sucking-and-not-opinionating variety. Come troll, come all, and join us for a conversation which, oddly, does not conclude with Sady and I shutting up and performing blow jobs!
