Kat > Recent Status Updates

~

"to be an American is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact." - Carl Friedrich

"the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."

Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value to difference...not to be fair or to be nice, but merely to be human and practical.

Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal.

Teach her never, ever to say such nonsense as "my money is my money and his money is our money." It is vile. And dangerous -- to have that attitude means that you must potentially accept other harmful ideas as well. Teach her that it is NOT a man's role to provide. In a healtyh relationship, it is the role of whoever can provide to provide.

Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite...Being a feminist is like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. You either believe in the full equality of men and women or you do not.

...More troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to "treat women well". No. No. No. There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman's well-being.

...the closest I have to a formula are my two "Feminist Tools"...

The first [tool] is your premise...Your premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not "if only." Not "as long as." I matter equally. Full stop.

The second tool is a question: Can you reverse X and get the same results?

"Often it is simply easier not to consider any of this, much less try to fight back against it, especially when fighting back means fighting men you'd prefer to keep thinking well of."

"It is so much more peaceful to not get mad, to not even think about the gross injustices that pepper our daily interactions with men: double standards, intellectual disregard, objectification, sexual harassment, pay inequity, differential domestic expectations and burdens, unequal representation, the banality of daily diminution."

"when you don't rage against the evils and the enemies against you what you do is turn in against yourself and you begin to despair and give up... anger turned inward leads to depression."

"Maybe we cry when we're furious in part because we feel a kind of grief at all the things we want to say or yell that we know we can't."

-blaming journalists, lobbyists, politicians, and large industry for misleading public on nutrition (as opposed to listening to scientists, allowing scientists to study and publish unbiased papers)

-author is a journalist

"I doubt the last third of this book could have been written forty years ago, if only because there would have been no way to eat the way I propose without going back to the land and growing all your own food..."

hooked by p25