Molly McArdle spoke to fifty people across the industry about diversity in publishing, and the results are in Brooklyn magazine. From Tony Tulathimutte: “You will be tokenized. Even when you get to write about your own experience of being a minority in America—you know, even that can be turned against you. Are you going to be used later on as leverage against an accusation of racism? Will you then be seen as a collaborator? In most cases the answer is yes.”
Eileen Myles endorsed Hillary Clinton over at Buzzfeed: “Yet now thanks to the combined force of sexism and ageism and the automatic likening of a woman to the moon Hillary remains primarily a reflective figure, just an accumulation of what anyone else wants. Women historically have always been the symbol for anyone’s negative thoughts about the economy…for as long as there was one and today, she, Hillary, readily stands in for the corporate culture. Somehow she is it. Who ever said abstractions are gender neutral in the English language? If it’s evil and menacing, and we’ve got to stop it, it’s a girl!”
Bethanne Patrick interviewed Joyce Maynard for Literary Hub, discussing her latest novel and the experience of growing up in the public eye: “It’s a very freeing experience, to speak one’s truth. I don’t have to worry about anybody else outing me, because I generally do it myself first…. And I always hope that in speaking and writing as I do, I’m giving other people who read what I have to say the permission in their own lives to do the same, with a little less shame.”
In Bustle, Lisa Marie Basile wrote about Kesha, sexual harassment, and the ways women support and advocate for one another: “[Demi] Lovato was right about this: there’s support, and then there’s support. Swift’s donation speaks to her incredible sense of generosity and good-naturedness…. But what happens when we’re too popular, too comfortable, and too well-liked to step out of line and say, ‘this is wrong’?”
OiYan Poon wrote about Chinese Americans protesting former NYPD officer Peter Liang’s manslaughter conviction for the death of Akai Gurley: “Just as in the past, we have a choice to either fight for a racist system that privileges whites to also benefit Asian Americans, or for a transformative systemic change that benefits everyone.”
Ione Gamble interviewed performance duo Dark Matter for Dazed. They discussed, among other things, abolishing gender norms in fashion, their latest online project, ctrl/alt/gender: “We wanted to challenge the idea that there is something inherently gendered about fashion. More broadly, we wanted to push back on the idea that gender is what we look like to begin with…. We also wanted to experience and think about what it felt like to ‘stage’ gender nonconformity for a fashion shoot when we both dress like this in our daily lives. What is it about the camera, about the pose, about the shoot that gives greater permissibility to gender transgression than the public more generally? What happens when the camera stops but everyone still thinks we are still dressing up?”
Bitch magazine was going through some shit this week. If you’d like to help support them, you can subscribe here.
Mallory Ortberg is right, everyone. The OC‘s Ryan Atwood is a lesbian:” 25. ‘Ryan’s favorite fruit is peaches, and his favorite band is Journey’ honestly the burden of proof is now on YOU to prove that Ryan Atwood ISN’T a lesbian”
I’m gonna go ahead and file this one under I Wish It Was Satire: Time magazine listed Evelyn Waugh as one of the 100 most-read women writers in college. I don’t even know how to feel about this. I guess I’m happy to see him in close proximity to Gloria Anzaldua, Marguerite Duras, and my favorite Bronte sister? Mostly I’m just reminded that I never finished watching the 1980 version of Brideshead on Netflix.
What did we miss this week? Let us know in the comments! <3
