"The true story of how Teen Vogue got mad, got woke, and began terrifying men like Donald Trump"

"Much of this is due to Teen Vogue’s editor, Elaine Welteroth, who graduated to the position last May, and Phil Picardi, the magazine’s digital editorial director. Just two years ago, the site’s most-read articles were comprised almost entirely of light celebrity and beauty news (an expose of Taylor Swift’s secret past as an Abercrombie & Fitch model performed particularly well). Today, a quick scan of its Twitter feed reveals pieces about the Dylann Roof verdict and Ohio’s recent abortion ban interspersed with galleries of “2016’s Cutest Celebrity Couples” and a review of Miranda Kerr’s skincare routine. (I clicked; my passion for gender equality is matched only by my abiding interest in dry oils.)...

Magazines for women and girls, ranging from Teen Vogue to Elle and Cosmopolitan, understand that political advocacy and more traditional lifestyle or entertainment coverage are not mutually exclusive. That shift is largely thanks to the rise of the feminist blogosphere... 

Almost by accident, the feminist blog movement was training an army of female journalists and editors... Jezebel’s success pushed establishment magazines to change the way they operated. Now there was incontrovertible evidence that women enjoyed being spoken to like intelligent human beings, rather than clothing-obsessed toddlers."

https://qz.com/866305/the-true-story-of-how-teen-vogue-got-mad-got-woke-and-began-terrifying-men-like-donald-trump/

FB: (the title is kinda overblown, it's more like "Here are some trends that explain why this isn't a surprise") "Teen Vogue, unlike Time or Newsweek, is drawing explicitly from a rich tradition of aggressive, opinionated, adversarial coverage of sexist white men." 

"Celebrity Feminism Has No Place in Trump’s America"

"If a celebrity doesn’t want to get political, fine, but the days of claiming an inherently politicized term without actually doing anything for that cause are over. Just as white women need to start showing up for Black Lives Matter, immigration rights, and other causes that don’t directly center around them, so do celebrity feminists need to start showing up for something besides apolitical sisterhood."

https://www.google.com/amp/www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/amp8642654/celebrity-feminism-has-no-place-in-trumps-america/?client=ms-android-verizon

FB: "When women start dying because their insurance and access to safe abortion got taken away, your squad goals won’t save us." 

"Migrants Welcome"

"Don’t let yourself be spun into a language of hatred and exclusion, at this hot moment in which it’s deemed OK to support refugees but still condemn migrants.

I say refugee, I say migrant, I say neighbor, I say friend, because everyone is deserving of dignity. Because moving for economic benefit is itself a matter of life and death. Because money is the universal language, and to be deprived of it is to be deprived of a voice while everyone else is shouting. Sometimes the gun aimed at your head is grinding poverty, or endless shabby struggle, or soul crushing tedium."

http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/dtake/migrants-welcome/

FB: "“OK, but where do we draw the line?” is a question you create in your head to distract you from your human duty to the other. If the line had been drawn in front of you instead of behind, you wouldn’t even be here now, wherever here might be."

"Toile Chic: A history of capital using labor for decoration"

"It’s strange but telling that affluent people continue to decorate their homes with images of happy poor people. Toile seems to hang in stately living rooms as a reminder that everything is okay, showing wealthy people how idyllic poor people’s lives can be. My parents hate toile, but have curiously never gotten around to changing the living room curtains that were there when we moved into our Baltimore home fifteen years ago. In the middle of the house, in blood red ink on ecru cotton, a clump of French peasants eats apples beneath a tree, a young boy tends to a goat, and a comely farm girl hikes up her crinoline to feed some chickens, her bosom spilling over the square neckline of her dress. When I look at those curtains, I often think of the men who come to mow and weed my parents’ yard, sweat beading on their brows in the summer humidity...

Such patterns were a hit with the French aristocracy and bourgeoisie, who used it to decorate rooms ensuite, the same pattern adorning bed linens, window treatments, walls, and upholstery. The soothing pastoral scenes could transform a stately bedroom into a womb of rustic sophistication... But toile’s cheerful imagery belied France’s fomenting revolution...

Another popular subject was France’s burgeoning colonial empire... during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, France colonized large portions of North and West Africa, the Levant, and Southeast Asia. With this growing colonial empire came fresh representations of non-Europeans as a dark, indistinguishable horde of the exotic, the decadent, the uncivilized."

http://www.theawl.com/2015/03/toile-chic

There are so many children's books and background scenes in movies and books that further these idyllic-peasant myths. And the innocent natives in paradise. And now that I know what it's called, I'm definitely not going to be observing Toile more closely and with more curiosity. I'm glad this isn't a thing on the west coast much.

"The Pitfalls of (White) Liberal Panic"

"Should we admit, now, that the “postracial” moment was a precursor (rather than a provocation) to a white populism that bizarrely insists on its nonraciality while it projects GIFs, memes, and clumsy puns invoking monkeys, taco bowls, and the Prophet Muhammad?  It is stranger still that old terms—racism, misogyny, homophobia, sexism—have flooded the national discourse as if this spectacle, this candidate, this President-elect is the catalyst of a doomsday that has in fact been long present in the seemingly limitless reach of white (male) entitlement to degrade, humiliate, and assert dominion over the field of zero consequences.

The morbid-cynical joyride of (white… multiculturalist?) liberal panic is neither merited nor, for some of us, fathomable.  One could learn lessons from the twentysomethings in my classroom—Black, Brown, a few white, working class and lower middle class, queer and trans*, one degree (or less) removed from an incarcerated and/or undocumented loved one—who do not lament a damn thing, and are simmering with urgent questions about the necessity of artful, collective rebellion against an order.  They are invigorating a truth that some older, wiser heads have generously shared for years:  that to live within an everyday understanding—and embrace—of emergency is to thrust liberal panic to the margins of an indulgence.  It is to say, without a hint of “i told you so” smugness or exaggerated rage, that such a political-cultural recalibration to the White Supremacist Normal (however absurd this version may be) is always to be anticipated."

https://abolitionjournal.org/the-pitfalls-of-white-liberal-panic/

Related: Hope in a Loveless place

FB: "Panic never lasts long, and once it dissipates, there is therapeutic (mal)adjustment to yet another new normal.  The modalities of sanctioned resistance to the worst of the normal become common, tolerable, negotiable, and finally ignorable.  Civil society (that is, this civil society) again reveals the non-negotiable terms of being human (in fact, of “human being”) in a rush to reconvene a spirit of nation, though possibly many more Other humans than at any time in the last half-century will refuse the call, despite the seductions of compulsory corporate diversity and official multiculturalism."

“I’m the most magnanimous motherfucker you know.”

"The thing is, for those of us who fly while brown, there is always someone in the security line with us who thinks we’re a threat. In my experience, it’s seldom the TSA agents themselves...

But our fellow passengers? They feel like they’re being heroic when they carefully scrutinize my iPhone charger in my bag. I’ve literally lost count of the number of times another guy (it’s always a man) in line asks me to account for the external battery pack I typically carry for my smartphone. These dudes want to be the hero who caught me in the TSA security line.

You have to think about what these people are saying when they scrutinize me, or every other brown person, in an airport security line. They’re clearly saying: I think you would kill me, and you, and all the people on this plane, including the children. Now, they never quite have the temerity to say it out loud. Instead, they just exchange that meaningful nod with the TSA agent, hoping to get me pulled out for a secondary screening...

I am particularly even-keeled by temperament, so I can endure as many as 12 consecutive accusations of intending to kill children before I get indignant... I confront the reality that if I did actually articulate how furious I am, I would be the one kicked off, and not my horrible lying accusers."

https://medium.com/@anildash/i-m-the-most-magnanimous-motherfucker-you-know-940190413df0

This makes me sad-sick. I can't imagine enduring this and feeling that vulnerable.

And the title, so spot on, if you need someone who can smile calmly through great indignity, find a brown person.

"I'm an Arab actor who's been asked to audition for the role of terrorist more than 30 times. If La La Land cleans up at the Oscars, I'm done"

"I’m now 26, and in my career, I’ve been sent nearing 30 scripts for which I’ve been asked to play terrorists on screen. Roles have varied from ones as meaty as “Suspicious Bearded Man on Tube” to “Muslim man who hides his bombs in a deceptive burka”.

When characters aren’t as explicitly linked to jihadi fundamentalism, most Arab roles I’ve read serve as antagonists to white heroes. BBC’s recently acclaimed The Night Manager reminded me of those difficulties in my own career – watching it, it felt obvious that Arab characters were placed where they were as mere “others,” narrative hurdles to complicate the journeys of its cast of white leads...

It is my genuine belief that if the TV and film industry had been more diligent in representing Arab characters – with all our humane, complex, intersectional three-dimensionality – xenophobia would not be as pandemic as it is today.

And hence I pray that La La Land doesn’t clean up at the Oscars (as at the BAFTAs). For this would be a sign that the industry prioritises the celebration of itself first of all, self-indulgently rejoicing in its own nostalgic - and white – mythology."

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/oscars-la-la-land-moonlight-arab-muslim-actor-audition-terrorist-i-am-done-a7595261.html

Related: A great essay on what it meant for Adele to win over Beyonce for Album of the Year - 

"Beyonce made an album that shifted the culture. Not just black culture. The culture. Whether you liked “Lemonade” or not, you are still dealing with the marketing, the images, the movie, the poetry, the music, the costumes, the concerts, the think-pieces, the feelings, the rage, the hurt, the reconciliation, the implications, the questions. You are still dealing. And while “25” did give us, “Hello,” which was absolutely a BIG deal when it came out in 2015 (insert side eye here)"

FB: "It’s incredible how many times I’ve been told to see racial profiling as a positive thing. 

And it’s true that since 9/11, there are genuinely more roles for Arab actors than ever before. “Hurrah!” they say. “Rejoice in the bounteous work opportunities! Finally, Arabs have a place in Hollywood!” Not centre-screen, of course, but on the faceless periphery, clutching a prop detonator while a famous white man acts his ass off and earns an Oscar in the process."

"Trump wants to turn the White House into reality TV. It’s up to you to change the channel"

"Shaking the curtains for secret details about the inner workings of the Trump administration is pointless. We could spend the next four years attempting to understand exactly what Trump wants, the motivations behind his volatile actions, and why it is that his brand of white nationalism has resonated with so much of the country. But we already know enough about him.

We know that the new president of the United States is a narcissist and a bully, beholden to no political organization and to no group of big donors. We know that he has surrounded himself, intimately, with carnival barkers and shallow thinkers. We know that they have encouraged an atmosphere of self-congratulation—standing on the sidelines of his press briefings to applaud and cheer his disparagement of the press—and that his cohort feels, much like white nationalists in general, profoundly aggrieved...

So the question, then, is not how the press should be covering Trump, but rather: How it should cover everything else? And how should all of us—as thinkers and citizens—be a part of the effort? How should any of us watch and write about and critique this moment in history?

I propose that we turn away from Washington, DC, to chronicle the end of the republic as we know it. Let’s take his spotlight away. We know his routine.

What we need now is to understand how people are enduring, surviving, and fighting back. We should find those impacted by Trump—and by Trumpism more generally—and share their stories. We could use our platforms to amplify their voices and focus on their struggle to survive in the age of white nationalism, tracing the material impact of Trump’s autocratic racial regime."

https://qz.com/895047/trump-wants-to-turn-the-white-house-into-reality-tv-its-up-to-you-to-change-the-channel/

"‘Fake it ’til you make it’ is psychologically damaging"

"The fact that inauthentic behavior threatens our sense of morality may shed light on certain aspects of the modern workplace. Take employee engagement, for example. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, only 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged at work. And for those who eventually leave their jobs, frustration, burnout, disillusionment, and misalignment with personal values are often cited.

Kouchaki believes this employee disengagement might be caused in part by moral distress. “Behavior that alienates people from themselves will always have an effect,” she says.

Hotel staff, for instance, might wield tight-lipped smiles and impeccable manners during exchanges with even the most disagreeable travelers. Kouchaki calls this “surface acting”—common behavior for those whose jobs depend on politeness and constant restraint. “This type of emotional labor has consequences,” she says...

“I would say that staying true to yourself matters, even if it is difficult, because we notice that there is a cost involved in straying too far from your personal values.”"
http://qz.com/588172/fake-it-til-you-make-it-actually-just-makes-you-feel-immoral/

I don't know how much any of this actually follows from the research, so it isn't "proven" but it feels very likely. And people who are in the minority, especially people like women who are socialized to fake positivity and engaged in emotional labor, are going to be particularly impacted by these workplace dynamics.

"I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook. You Should Stop Playing Right Into It."

"It was a masterful bit of trolling that admittedly felt a lot more meaningful and exciting when I was younger than it does to me today: We encouraged protests at colleges by sending outraged emails to various activist groups and clubs on campuses where the movie was being screened. We sent fake tips to Gawker, which dutifully ate them up. We created a boycott group on Facebook that acquired thousands of members. We made deliberately offensive ads and ran them on websites where they would be written about by controversy-loving reporters. After I began vandalizing some of our own billboards in Los Angeles, the trend spread across the country, with parties of feminists roving the streets of New York to deface them (with the Village Voice in tow)...

I’ve never seen so much publicity. It was madness.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. Because it’s basically the exact playbook that right wing blogger Milo Yiannopoulos is running on his own cross country trolling tour. By almost any metric but political correctness, it’s been masterfully successful—his book has since been to #1 on Amazon twice, and the protests at UC Berkeley last week generated national headlines and were addressed directly by the President...

There is absolutely nothing that Milo has said (and more importantly, done) that ought to revoke his First Amendment right to give a speech on a college campus. It’s profoundly hypocritical for the same activists who demanded safe spaces against microaggressions to march en masse and aggressively shut down a nerdy, gay conservative immigrant with a funny name (a minority if there ever was one) until he flees under armed guard. As much as you might dislike what he’s saying—and I personally dislike it a lot—I promise, you are not setting a good precedent by preventing him from saying it. Worse, you’re giving him more people to say it to when the ensuing media coverage explodes."

http://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolling-playbook-you-should-stop-playing-right-into-it/

This is a different way to look at it.

I'm still frustrated with arguments that we have to stand on the perfect moral high ground or nowhere (there is a lot more politically legitimate space than that one spot on the top of the hill, and that spot is less and less accessible the fewer privileges you have - it takes real sacrifice to be there and stay there). 

But, I think I can draw the lesson that some things feed off of opposition and should just be ignored until they fall apart by themselves. 

Related: one from Chavez-opponent; white people enjoyed Toni Lauren too much; something on free speech

FB: "Someone like Milo or Mike Cernovich doesn’t care that you hate them—they like it. It’s proof to their followers that they are doing something subversive and meaningful. It gives their followers something to talk about. It imbues the whole movement with a sense of urgency and action—it creates purpose and meaning."

"No, Native Americans aren't genetically more susceptible to alcoholism"

"The "firewater" fairytale that Elm came to know all too well goes like this: Europeans introduced Native Americans to alcohol, which they were genetically unprepared to handle. That happenstance led to alcoholism rates that are around twice as high as those seen in whites — and alcohol-related death rates, which are at least tripled. In this view, colonization didn’t make conquered people susceptible to heavy drinking — genes did.

Addiction is often described as an equal opportunity disease. It isn’t: while anyone can become addicted under certain conditions, like most bullies, addiction prefers to hit people who are already hurting. The more trauma and social exclusion a child experiences, the greater the addiction risk. This creates a vicious cycle: addiction itself becomes a reason for even more rejection, prejudice, and maltreatment.

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the shameful collection of stereotypes and stigmas surrounding alcoholism among American Indians. "Firewater" myths come from the racist ideology that fueled colonialism...

In fact, there’s no evidence that Native Americans are more biologically susceptible to substance use disorders than any other group, says Joseph Gone, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. American Indians don’t metabolize or react to alcohol differently than whites do, and they don’t have higher prevalence of any known risk genes.

Rates of all types of addiction — not just alcohol — are elevated in aboriginal peoples around the world, not only in America. It’s unlikely that these scattered groups randomly happen to share more vulnerability genes for addiction than any other similarly dispersed people. But what they clearly do have in common is an ongoing multi-generational experience of trauma."
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9428659/firewater-racist-myth-alcoholism-native-americans?src=longreads

This history of alcohol is really interesting; before chemistry and biology explained that wine, beer, and liquors all had the same compound, and that this compound had a biological impact that created intoxication, these drinks were not all considered to be in the same category. Intoxication was thought of as a low-class behavior, and so only the drinks that were affordable and commonly consumed by the poor were considered to be intoxicating. People genuinely believed that wine didn't make you drunk.

And there are all these understandings of the world that fall directly from time periods where white supremacy was considered to be a strong, scientific explanation of the world. We really need to actively de-colonize science and medicine.

This is also an excellent example of why everyone needs to have access to becoming STEM researchers; if there were only white people doing research, I don't know that it would occur to anyone that this common understanding might be a myth, and I doubt anyone would feel a big motivation to commit time and resources to this study (not to mention the question of whether it would be possible to gain access to DNA samples from Native American people).

Related: One about the holocaust

FB: I found this on a list of the best overlooked articles of 2015. It's such an important case study of a "scientific" myth that obscures the real problems, and places the burdens on the victims. This is a myth I carried, and never bothered to question, until I read this. It makes me wonder about all the other things rattling around.

"How a dispute at Harvard led to a grad student’s forced mental exam and an extraordinary restraining order against a prominent scientist"

"German, however, believes the forced evaluation was an act of revenge by Rubin, retaliation prompted by German’s allegation of scientific misconduct against Rubin and two of his students. (The allegation was later dismissed.) And this past August, a Massachusetts judge agreed with German, concluding that Rubin was “motivated by bias and revenge, not by a legitimate interest in keeping German safe.” The judge issued an order that has created an extraordinary situation: Rubin must allow German to work in his laboratory, but stay at least 30.5 meters away from him, and have no direct or indirect contact. Rubin must also provide German with all of the lab resources he had before the problems began... 

[In early 2016] One research associate suspected German was tinkering with her experiment, after she noticed that images her equipment had automatically recorded over the weekend were out of focus on Monday mornings. She stated in her affidavit that she began locking her computer, and even rinsing out her coffee mug, worried that German might spike it with chemicals. In April, after lab members informed Rubin of their concerns, Rubin and German attended a meeting with an ombudsperson in an effort to reduce tensions... 

The order has made life “very difficult for Dr. Rubin and for the operation of the Rubin lab,” says Rubin’s attorney, John Rooney of Melick & Porter in Boston. “[T]he other graduate students will not progress toward their degrees” if he couldn’t come to the lab, Rubin stated in an affidavit. “Work on federal grants that require my personal participation would need to be suspended, which likely would mean many individuals would lose their jobs.” A spokesperson for Harvard says officials “are helping facilitate Dr. Rubin’s compliance with the order, while ensuring that research programs in the lab continue unimpeded and that the studies of the student are fully supported.” German says that, “basically, the situation is really painful.”"

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/how-dispute-harvard-led-grad-student-s-forced-mental-exam-and-extraordinary-restraining?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=harvarddispute-10556

Posting this just as theater of the absurd. I'm glad that science is shifting away from some of the norms that made these kinds of science-personalities and lab environments possible. But then again, humans are humans are always possible disasters. 

"Guilt And Shame As A UI Design Element"

"This guilt strat isn’t just locked in the primordial garden of several argumentative Medium thinkpieces. It is actually built into sites themselves. It manifests as cute little images that appear on various sites when they detect readers have ad blockers turned on. On Twitter, people recently complained that Forbes was strategically shaming them with Martin Shkreli quotes (clearly designed to torture the ad-blocking reader into madness). But other sites like GQ.com go with a more straightforward guilt-inducing approach.

The worst shame offender of all, however, is quickly becoming the mailing list opt-out guilt trip. When visiting a website, a pop-up implores you to sign up for their fantastic mailing list. The only way to get rid of this list is to click on the fine print at the bottom. But too often, this doesn’t merely say “Opt out” or “No thanks.”

No. It forces you to click a statement acknowledging you are a terrible, deplorable, disgusting human being.

It is not just enough that you don’t want to subscribe to the mailing list about political news. You must admit that “no, I DON’T care about being well-informed and reading great journalism.”"
http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/the-guilt-trip-as-a-user-interface-element#.uvbnRk7dK

This is fantastic, largely because of all of the screencaps of "guilt UI" with captions that clarify how they are supposed to make you feel.

"What Commuters Get Wrong About Escalator Etiquette"

"recent evidence has found fault with this popular logic—instead finding that having everyone stand on an escalator can actually relieve subway station congestion.

Last year, Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway successfully reduced escalator accidents by campaigning for passengers to stand on both sides. Inspired by that effort, Transport for London (TfL)Engineering Manager Paul Stoneman ran some calculations using measurements for the Holborn station in London. According to his results, forcing an entire escalator to stand could potentially accommodate an additional 31 passengers per minute, or 28 percent more than if the right lane were allowed to bypass the left.

How can that be? The explanation, it turns out, is rather simple: Once an escalator reaches a certain height, passengers are deterred from walking up the left side. This creates crowding at the foot of the escalators as passengers wait to access the standing lane on the right. Enforcing a standing-only rule ensures that passengers are moving up the escalators consistently, creating fewer pile-ups. It also allows for more people to fit on an escalator at a given time."

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/subway-escalator-standing-study-tfl-london/424950/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%201/22/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

This is very real for some DC escalators, where it is like climbing a hill in heels and a suit.

I bet Trump couldn't handle this
#petty

"Fuck this White Dude Game Theory"

"When articles are coming out from people with absolutely no political experience other than the fact that when they are playing computer games there’s always some hella complicated strategy and everything happens for some pre-planned reason, and suddenly that becomes the defining narrative, I’m gonna need y’all to pause.

And when those articles are making people doubt the effectiveness of getting out in the streets and marching (as if the fuck-all nothing everybody’s been doing before this was so damn effective) and makes people give up before they even start, I’m gonna need y’all to pause."

https://medium.com/@IjeomaOluo/fuck-this-white-dude-game-theory-ae59b5bed21#.qrjyk3d5d

FB: "You know what causes resistance fatigue? Assholes who claim to be with us, telling us that our defeat is preordained and our protest is useless" 

"How Unconscious Sexism Could Help Explain Trump’s Win"

"“I don’t think you can understand [Clinton’s] candidacy without understanding gender bias is baked into it,” Caroline Heldman, a political scientist at Occidental College who has written about internalized sexism, said in a telephone interview. “We don’t like women to be ambitious. It rubs men and women the wrong way.”

Measuring implicit bias is tricky — because the bias is unconscious, you can’t just ask people how they feel about women in a professional context, or about sexist attitudes. So researchers instead run online experiments that test how quickly subjects associate typically male or female words such as “boy” and “lady” with “career” or “family.” (You can take a version of the test at the website of Project Implicit, a nonprofit research organization.)

Project Implicit ran this experiment with more than 700,000 online test takers from 2006 to 2015. The results show that conservative women had higher implicit gender bias than women with other political ideologies and than men of any political ideology, according to data provided by Colin T. Smith, the project’s director of education, at my request. At every level of self-reported political ideology, women had a higher level of implicit gender bias than men...

HCD would like to do follow-up studies on the topic, including tracking bias levels over time and examining whether exposure to certain segments of the media affects bias."

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-unconscious-sexism-could-help-explain-trumps-win/

In a way, this totally doesn't surprise me, that women have higher implicit bias under this test. We are constantly, constantly confronted with negative stereotypes and people and structures pushing against us and setting up boxes; men get a lot of it more indirectly. 

I kinda suspect that I'm more implicitly racist (at least by the design of these tests) than most of my white friends, I just spend so much more time bring do much more impacted by race stereotypes. 

The question I would be really interested in too is stereotype threat, and the fear that if we didn't elect the perfect woman, the country wouldn't ever give another woman a chance. 

FB: internalized prejudice is such an important but underexplored topic  "Researchers have found that this kind of bias is stronger on average in women than in men, and, among women, it is particularly strong among political conservatives. And at least according to one study, this unconscious bias was especially strong among one group in 2016: women who supported Trump."