BE THERE.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 14.
7 PM.
SAN FRANCISCO.
SUPPORT DIVERSE VOICES.
(AND YER FIRST DRINK IS ON US!)
Holy shit though.
Russell Simmons. Lars von Trier. Al Franken. Charlie Rose. Garrison Keillor. Matt Lauer with the hidden button heard round the world. Roy Moore. Jeremy Piven. Jeffrey Tambor. Kevin Spacey. Louis C.K. Dustin Hoffman. Brett Ratner.
…which of course begs the question on everyone’s lips. Just when does President Trump have to respond (or apologize, be impeached, go to jail, formally self-destruct) to the more than TWELVE WOMEN who accused him of sexual assault or harassment?
Bueller…? BUELLER?!
And The List, of course, goes on much MUCH longer than even thishandy dandy one The Washington Post has rolled out — constantly updated with a seemingly never-ending throng of sometimes-sinister, sometimes-manipulative, but always-handsy men keen to touch bodies that aren’t their own!
(My personal forever and ever gut-thorn is a male teacher at my boarding school who lived in the girl’s dorm with his wife and many daughters. He liked to call me a slut. “I see you with all those boys.” He liked to walk into my room without knocking. He liked to smirk, “why don’t you put on a shirt before you come down to the lounge?” glancing down at my double-A, 15-year-old breasts as I tried to lunge into my t-shirt.)
In my mind, I imagine each and every one of these shitty humans in an elaborate domino line; an endless sinewy path of smooth white tablets extending to the horizon.
Women have been trying to topple it for centuries to no avail; we’ve been met with shame, disbelief, firings, silence-ings, and open mockery instead of solace or justice.
But now? All we can hear is the resounding click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click as each man falls, toppled by the truth.
And honestly? It sounds like music. Like a hot track I can’t stop shaking my ass to. Or a ballad where everyone is weeping in the rain and they lift their faces to the sky Shawshank style.
But a lot of folks — mostly men — have a newfound worry. They don’t understand what’s appropriate anymore.
They’re worried this whole #metoo thing is actually a PC man-hunt masquerading as a watershed moment, and when the smoke clears we’ll all just be openly menstruating and/or cackling over their steaming corpses I guess.
But you know what? In lieu of your understanding I will take your fear. In place of you being a good person I will take your worry. Gladly. If you don’t know how to be an appropriate being in the world — “not masturbating in front of my colleagues is the easiest thing I do all day” quips Samantha Bee — I’ll take your sweet sweet fear if it means it’ll keep your tongue in your mouth and your dick in your pants.
Let the tales keep coming. Let’s rewrite these horror stories with happy endings — with recourse, redemption, and a touch of revenge.
With love + rage,
Katie Tandy
Co-founder | Creative Director
Dear Al Franken: I’ll Miss You, But You Can’t Matter Anymore
By Ijeoma Oluo
Al, I’m so very sad at you. Is that a thing? I mean, I’m mad at you too, but mostly, I’m very very very sad at you. How fucking stupid and selfish of you to ruin yourself for us like this. We really needed you.
I’m not surprised you felt so safe doing it. I’m not surprised you also felt safe trying to kiss other women without permission, or grabbing their asses or boobs. I’m just deeply disappointed that you wanted to. I thought you’d be good enough to not want to.
I live in Seattle. Right now I’m surrounded by good liberal men who are lining up to say how much they believe women. While they are expressing their outrage, they are secretly hoping that their name won’t show up in a woman’s story.
The Remarkable Intersection Of Anal Sex And Toxic Masculinity
By Katie Tandy
Before I knew it I was happily drunk, drinking whiskey, and chatting with the human equivalent of a pitbull-meatball — a hulking, thick man with a Bic-ed head. He was dressed as, perhaps, an intergalactic monk?
In truth, I don’t know how we got onto the topic. No one believes me, but I really don’t. But we started talking about butt stuff. Straight cis men butt stuff.
And suddenly I heard myself say, “Oh man, my dear friend is a straight guy and he’s very intrigued by his asshole, but he can’t just, like, set himself free. He is so hung up on it. I feel like he’s got all this….” I waved my arm around, “maybe, homophobic shit around his own ass? And it’s just so sad because, like, ass stuff is the best!”
My new companion’s face lit up. Like Christmas.
The Ghosts Of Atomic Past: Nuclear Terror Is Back
By Katherine Cross
For all the talk of how “unprecedented” the Trump era is, what we’re actually seeing is the Greatest Hits album of right wing Americana turned up to 11. What has been so terrifying is not quite that Trump and his sycophants are doing anything new, but that they’re forcing us to relive terrors we’d buried, and amplifying existing ones.
…
In November of ’83, a NATO military exercise called Able Archer (this one was more of a communications and paper exercise, rather than one involving tanks and ships) got underway.
We came perilously close to the apocalypse.
Taking Down Medicine’s Monuments
By Vidya Viswanathan
In 1845, surgeon James Marion Sims purchased slave women with fistulas and housed them on his property for the purposes of medical experimentation geared towards gynecological research.
In his memoirs, he names three of the at least 11 slave women he kept to experiment on — Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey — brought to him by their owners. For the next four years, he did a series of experiments on them without anesthesia.
According to physician-historian Vanessa Northington Gamble, “there was a belief at the time that black people did not feel pain in the same way.”
Writer Aya de León Tells A Different Story About Sex Work
By Jenee Darden
“Sex work sits at the intersection of gender, commerce, race, nationality, and socioeconomic class,” de León says. “By creating this sex work community, it became a way to comment on all of that — to comment on sex trafficking, the collusion between corporations and sex trafficking.”
De León’s books are published by Dafina, which is known for its catalogue of urban lit, or street lit, books — a genre defined by an inner-city setting, Black main characters, and themes like drugs, violence, sex, gangs, and poverty.
The books — which de León points out have a high readership of young women of color — are sold in Walmart and major bookstores, and can be found in libraries in Black and brown communities.
