Author Lynn Enright is an empowered feminist – and is therefore crushed and rendered tearful by a commonplace word:
I realised that by not using the word vulva, I was doing myself and my genitals a disservice… Using the words vulva and vagina interchangeably isn’t a harmless linguistic quirk: it’s actually a technique for diminishing a woman’s sexual agency.
Ms Enright invokes fellow feminist Harriet Lerner, who claims that the common usage of vagina is an act of “psychic genital mutilation.”
The Wizard of Oz is a grotesque predictor of Trump’s America.
It says so here, in the Guardian. Specifically,
Oz is first wondrous and revelatory, then sinister and suspect, a good trip that goes wrong… It’s this lurking inner wrongness, the darkness at its edges and the emptiness at its core, that speaks to me now.
The author of the above is Bidisha, a mono-named entity who may be familiar to long-term readers, and who describes herself, unironically, as a “non-white angry political female.” One who seems determined to find yet another staple of Christmas both ghastly and problematic:
It’s impossible to watch the newly crowned ‘most influential film ever’ without seeing the parallels to the sickly US of today.
Oh, ye doubters. Madame Bidisha has her reasons.
We can read the catastrophic effects of climate change into the tornado that sets the narrative off,
I didn’t say they would be convincing.
see the opioid crisis in the characters’ drugged sleep in Oz’s Powell and Pressburger-esque poppy field, and empathise with the mangy Lion, rusty Tin Man and under-stuffed Scarecrow’s search for organ donors and reliable medical support in an Oz without a solid welfare state.
If you think our Guardian columnist is perhaps overreaching a tad, I feel I should point out nothing that follows is likely to disabuse you.
“Can pot make you a better parent?”
Asks the Guardian, in a classic-sentence-kind-of-way. It has to be said, even for the Guardian, it isn’t the most promising start:
An Oregon mother posted a photo last year of herself breastfeeding her baby while she took a bong hit.
This photo here, in case you’re curious.
Naturally, the image went viral…. Jenn Lauder, an Oregon cannabis activist… chided the breastfeeder for exposing the baby to smoke and for the “optics” of the image. “That mom could have made better choices,” Lauder told me recently.
Happily, things soon mellow out a bit:
Yes, it’s jarring to see a woman in a quintessential act of motherhood with her face in a bong. But the reality is some parents believe cannabis improves their child rearing… Marijuana, as cannamoms and cannadads see it, relieves the tedium of parenting while helping them engage with their children. With marijuana, “I’m able to sit and play Legos for an extensive period of time… and make it more fun rather than something functional,” said April Pride, founder of Van der Pop, a line of stylish cannabis accessories for women. She said it also helped break up the monotony of spending more time at home.
You see, they’re doing it for the kids. How terribly selfless and high-minded. Another imbibing parent adds, “There’s too much taboo about it. It’s the equivalent of having a couple of glasses of wine in my life.” Though I suspect that a parent knocking back several glasses of wine during the day, every day, to make playing with their child more fun, might raise a few eyebrows.
And then,
When a parent is an open cannabis user it can also change the tenor of conversations with kids about drug use. “Cannabis has strengthened the bond I have with my daughter because I’m honest about something that’s important to me,” Lauder said. “At age 10, she’s incredibly social justice minded.”
Oh dear. And it was going so well.
Update, via the comments:
For what it’s worth, I’m not disapproving of recreational cannabis use, though it’s not my thing. I find it incapacitating. But the Guardian article does feature a tangle of messages that aren’t entirely consonant and seem rather self-serving. We’re told that getting stoned while supposedly being responsible for small children, and talking with 10-year-olds about the joys of getting high, is “the equivalent of having a couple of glasses of wine.” As if parents getting pissed while looking after the kids, and as if 10-year-olds talking about mummy’s drug use, were in no way contentious. We’re also told that getting stoned while on duty, as it were, is a bonding exercise. Specifically,
Cannabis has strengthened the bond I have with my daughter because I’m honest about something that’s important to me.
But imagine someone saying my drinking is important to me. What would that suggest?
Via Julia.
Christmas music is emotionally damaging and a hazard to our health.
Yes, the Guardian’s signature inversion of the festive spirit has once again started to blossom:
‘Tis the season when you can recite every single word of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year because you’ve heard it 25,671 times this morning already and, let me tell you, there is nothing remotely wonderful about the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer. It’s extremely annoying.
To bolster those eye-catching claims of musical health hazards, Ms Mahdawi cites a report sharing the hitherto unguessed-at news that round-the-clock exposure to in-store Christmas songs can irritate a significant minority of retail staff. Yes, I know. I’ll pause while you steady yourselves. However, these anhedonic tidings extend beyond mere in-store playlist repetition:
The report [notes] that 43% of people who hate holiday music think it’s too repetitive and 26%, who I imagine all read the Guardian, said they the dislike the materialism of Christmas music.
Yes, people are buying their loved ones things that they might like. How ghastly.
It’s true that a lot of festive music is extremely materialistic.
It’s a “futile materialism,” apparently.
But, worse still, a lot of it is just deeply weird if not outright disturbing. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, for example, a classic of the genre… can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state and the pervasiveness of sexual predation.
This, remember, is written by a grown woman.
Meanwhile, in the world of the well-adjusted Guardian columnist:
It was July 2014, Nashville Tennessee. I was walking into a gas station for a bottle of water when the man behind me stepped up to open the door for me. With that act of kindness, something inside me snapped and I flew into a blind rage. I began screaming at him at the top of my lungs.
This latest admission of derangement is by Stacie Huckeba, a photographer and video-maker. She continues,
“No, you cannot open this door for me! You wouldn’t have opened it two years ago, so you damn sure can’t open it now!” I scowled and stormed away, completely enraged.
You see, he’s not allowed to do that – holding open the door for her – or for any woman, presumably. Because although Ms Huckeba didn’t know this polite gentleman and had never seen him before, she’s nevertheless sure of what his views on holding doors open for people must have been two years previously, back when she was fat. It’s intersectional science. And then, inadvertently, a punchline of sorts:
It was the third time that week that a man had done something polite for me.
Damn the patriarchy and all its works.
First a man had bought me a drink at a concert, and then there was the nice man who had helped me scoop up my groceries after I dropped my bag, and now this man with the door.
At this point, thankfully, Ms Huckeba offers an explanation, and justification, for her erratic, rather alarming mood swings:
Two years before this, in July 2012, I weighed 365lb, which roughly translates into 26 stone. I was enormous, and had been my entire life. I grew up an obese kid, was an obese teenager, an obese young adult, and by my mid-40s I had ballooned into a hugely obese adult. But that summer I started a massive journey to lose 220lb, or almost 16 stone, over the course of four and a half years. As I sit here today, I’m literally a third of the body mass I used to be. I am an average-sized woman who wears a size medium pretty much across the board. And, I am happy to report, I am also a fairly happy, confident person.
Yes, of course. That would explain all the random screaming.
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