Beka > Recent Status Updates

Oh, this was the perfect audio companion to begin while I washed dishes before bed. Kimmerer's voice talking about mosses at the end of the day? You cannot go wrong.

"Living by a love ethic we learn to value loyalty + a commitment to sustained bonds over material advancement. While careers + making money remain important agendas, they never take precedence over valuing + nurturing human life + well-being.

I know no one who has embraced a love ethic whose life has not become more joyous + more fulfilling."

"Commitment to a love ethic transforms our lives by offering us a different set of values to live by. In large and small ways, we make choices based on a belief that honesty, openness, + personal integrity need to be expressed in public + private decisions."

"All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."

"Study participants did not view male politicians the same as woman politicians with cooler mannerisms. Being seen as uncaring is a 'norm violation' for women that is just....isn't....for men.

There is an expectation that on average, women are going to be more pro-social than men. So it shocks us more."

"If you assume men receive the same heat for being perceived as cold, you'd be wrong.
A 2010 study found woman politicians were seen as less caring -- and that perception set off a reaction of moral outrage in both male + female study participants, who viewed such women with contempt, anger, and disgust."

"Like so many of the decisions to exclude women in the interests of simplicity, from architecture to medical research, this conclusion (that unpaid domestic + care work doesn't count towards a country's GDP growth) could only be reached in a culture that conceives of men as the default human, and women as a niche operation."

Wtaf........

"For most of the 20th century, there were no women musicians in the Philharmonic NY orchestra.
All of a sudden, in the 1970s, the numbers of women hired as musicians began to go up...and up.

What caused this? The beginning of blind auditions, thanks to a lawsuit in the 1970s. By the 1980s, women made up nearly 50% of musicians in the orchestra."

"As a side benefit + long term solution to the feminized poverty, pension credits for the main carer have encouraged men to take on more unpaid care load, which raises the question:
Is women's unpaid work undervalued because we don't see it, or is it invisible because we don't value it?"

"Brazil, Bolivia, + Botswana, which have achieved close to universal pension coverage between men + women, thanks to the introduction of widely-available non-contributory pensions.

Women in Bolivia are credited a year of pension contributions per child, up to 3. As a side benefit + long term solution to the feminized poverty, pension credits for the main carer have encouraged men to do more unpaid care work."

"A study found that Uber Pool was quite a bit quicker than public transit in Chicago.

Given women's time poverty, women's paid and unpaid work combines into a longer working day than men's, so Uber Pool might seem attractive; except it costs 3x more than public transit. Women are also more cash poor than men, due to the gender pay gap around the world that varies depending on where you are."

"Men tend to travel on their own, but women travel encumbered -- by shopping, by buggies, by children or elderly relatives they're caring for.

A 2015 survey on travel in London found that women are significantly less likely than men to be satisfied with streets + pavement after their last journey by foot. Women are more likely to be affected by inadequate walkways, with buggies or without."

"Ignoring shorter walking trips also adds to the gap in trip-chaining data (the sort of daily travel women tend to do), as this kind of journey usually involves at least one journey on foot.

In short, the assumption that shorter walking trips are irrelevant to infrastructure policy is a little short of an assumption that *women* are irrelevant to infrastructure policy."

"The gender gap in travel data continues with the intentional omission in many travel surveys of shorter, pedestrian, + other non-motorized trips; these trips are not seen as relevant for infrastructure policy making.

Given that women generally walk further + for longer than men, in part because of their caregiving responsibilities, in part because women tend to be poorer, these policy choices effect them more."

"For too long, (patriarchal, male-led society) has positioned women as a deviation from standard humanity, and this is why they've been allowed to become invisible.

It's time for a change in perspective. It's time for women to be seen."

"It's when women are able to step out from the shadows, with their voices and their bodies, that things start to shift. The gaps close."

"DNA testing of skeletons buried with weapons in more than 1,000 (couldn't tell which people group title was said) burial mounds from Ukraine to Central Asia have revealed that up to 37% of women and girls were active warriors."

"Data is just another word for information, + information has many sources; so does human experience.

So I will argue that when we are designing a world that is meant to work for everyone, we need women in the room. If the people making decisions are all white, able-bodied men, mostly from America, that, too, constitutes a data gap."

"Maybe we're okay, kid?
I'll rewrite this whole life and this time there'll be so much love,
you won't be able to see beyond it."

"Odor of unknown origin,
she washes her hair, smoke
of unseen fire -- memory smuggled
deep inside dreams lush with grief,
stowed in her blood -- an unrung bell,
an uncalled prayer, bless this child
born on sorrow's palm."

"The refugee's heart has six chambers.
In the first is your mother's unpacked suitcase.
In the second, your father cries into his hands.
The third room is an immigration office,
Your severed legs in the fourth,
In the fifth a uterus -- yours?
The sixth opens with the right papers."