“Currently, we’re collectively mourning the loss of a CanLit – and a Canada – that was always an idea instead of a lived reality. It’s fine to mourn, of course. It’s natural. But we can’t just stand around and complain about the dumpster fire in front of us forever. Eventually we have to grab some fucking fire extinguishers and put that fire out. In other words, we have to sit down, assess the criticism and do the work to fix the problems.” CanLit is a raging dumpster fire – and some thoughts on what to do about it
Abortion doulas offer support in Halifax
Counting every instance of rape, death and audit on “Game of Thrones”
“If anything, nearly two decades into the new millennium, everything feels a little too real. In place of predictable consumerist anhedonia, instead of the blithe horizon of cardboard cut-out suburban security, reality has come back with a mouthful of razors ready to rip open the throats of anyone pretending they know what’s coming.” Laurie Penny on why we are all so very anxious
Who’s allowed to hold hands in public?
How Taylor Swift played the victim for a decade and made her entire career
The sisterhood of the exact same pants: on sororities and dressing alike
“One way I’ve been trying to think about this is by shifting questions of queer authenticity—is someone really queer or not?—to queer accountability. Are there certain actions or values we can hold one another accountable for as members of a community?” What does the word “queer” even mean today?
Gentrification is not the new colonialism
Sarah Polley on misogyny and sexual harassment in the Canadian film and TV industry
“To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.”” Ta-Nehisi Coates on Trump as the first White president
On aromanticism and being happy alone
10 college course reading lists you can follow along with this semester
The youth giving us hope:
Kids telling Infowars they're fucking idiots is my favorite kind of content pic.twitter.com/dRneam1BWm
— Wild Geerters (@classiclib3ral) September 7, 2017
“One of the most persistent and damaging cultural myths about sexual assault is that the people who commit it are uniquely evil—that they are not the same as the people you are friends with, or related to, or dating, or a fan of, the people that you trust or that you like. This is the same lie that says rape and assault and harassment only happen to a few people some of the time for a very particular set of reasons, and that if you think those things have ever happened to you, they should be easy to identify, fact-check and prosecute—otherwise, maybe they didn’t at all.” Emma Healey has a brilliant essay on Louis C.K. and talking about sexual assault
“I want black girls and women to be valued even when they don’t know the latest social justice language, can’t read above a 6th grade level, or that their lives are even #intersectional.” This is not a Beyonce diss or Black Girl Magic Pt 2
If you missed it, check out Francesca Ekwuyasi’s Soft Jaw on the GUTS blog this week.
Secwepemc people and allies are building tiny houses to block the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and you can support them!
