Roxane (any pronouns) I make ceramics and illustrations and am trying to make friends on here. 80s child, ND, living in Amsterdam. I share my art and political interests here, languages are English, Dutch, Japanese.
Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.)
*
âI will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth is cruel and unnatural. You can put fences, guards and dogs around your home, so you are like a prisoner in your own life, but if you are rich you will live in fear. You will fear your servants. You will look out the window of your limousine and, at every traffic light, wonder if each and every passerby has a gun and bullet with your name on it. It is only that the killing must be completely random. The victims having nothing in common other than their wealth, the killers nothing in common other than their poverty. The message should be clear: if you are rich you can be killed at any time. The police would arrest millions but there would always be another poor man that could suddenly snap. We would only have to kill ten to start, to strike fear in the hearts of every billionaire in the world. And he will be the first. I will see to it.
On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I donât want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I donât want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.â
â Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor
So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really notâbut honestly this is it man.
I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see âJohn knew that...â in prose writing I immediately think âhow? How does he know it?â Interrogate your witnesses. Cross-examine them. Make them explain their reasoning. It pays dividends.
First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.
What weâre talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, âthoughtâ words are included. But so are âheard, saw, looked, tasted, smelledâ etc.âmost words having to do with the senses.
This isnât black and white advice; sometimes youâll use these words and thatâs okay. Theyâre not WRONG. Theyâre just weaker. And theyâre weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*
If you want your reader to feel like theyâre experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.
*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes theyâre seeing through and thoughts theyâre privy to. So you donât need to tell them âI saw X.â Or âI heard X.â Or âI thought Y.â You can just jump into the action/observation as itâs happening.
This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.
âIt was rainy.â Versus: âThe rain pounded against the roof.â Or âThe rain howled like an injured animal.â Or âThe rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.â All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.
The most valuable advice that Author Ex gave me through the years that we wrote together was this: the problem with all these filter words is that they create distance in the POV.
That means that when you read a line like
John saw that the curtains were open.
It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.
You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.
You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?
for my executive dysfunction humans who need any vegetable: microwave steamers.
chop a veggie, put in steamer with some water, microwave it for five minutes and eat it with a nice sauce. glorious and simple
Where's it made? Who brought it here? How much were they paid? Who makes it? Is it made in separate parts and put together? How much were they all paid to do this? Where do they get the materials? Who paid for that? Who brings it there? How much were they paid? Who streamlined the base materials? How much were they paid? Who gathered the base materials? Where? How much were they paid? Is it good for them? Is it good for us? Is it good for the land? Is it necessary? Is it biodegradable? How much does it hurt? Do I need it? Do I even want it?
Really though, what was that about? I donât know is a valid answer. It communicates very clearly that the child cannot answer your question, and therefore maybe needs more help understanding the question/situation. Why do you try and push them to give an answer they donât have? That stresses them out and it makes them feel like theyâre being punished for not knowing something.
i thought i was the only one with an âi donât knowâ problem because my parents made it seem it was the strangest and also most horrible thing in the world. i genuinely didnât know and they got angry and that only blocked my thoughts more which meant i didnât know the answer to anything else.
Also âI donât knowâ is a commonly used sentence for children with ADHD/Autism. We DONâT know why we canât do our homework. We DONâT know why we canât eat certain foods sometimes. We DONâT know why we forgot to do a chore. Itâs really distressing when you genuinely donât know and people think youâre just lying or indifferent
ââI donât knowâ is not a valid answerâ is how we get all these people who state compete guesses with certain confidence and think that generative answers being completely unreliable isnât a problem.
and itâs way too normalised in the medical profession too - imagine how much better to say âwe donât yet know whatâs wrong with youâ than âum er obviously itâs because youâre fat/female/poc/trans/neurodivergentâ
I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:
He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.
Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.
Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.
When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.
Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.
Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.
As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.
His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."
Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.
Before and after his death, Thomas has been celebrated as an icon of the LGBTQ+ community for obvious reasons.
For those of you with android devices, you can use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) standalone app control program to get rid of all the bloatware, data mining, and AI crap - no coding needed!
There are also Android-based alternatives like GrapheneOS and LineageOS, which are pretty easy to install. These are unfortunately available for a more limited range of devices (Graphene is ironically Pixel only, while Lineage supports more), but it's very worth checking out whether one of them might work for your phone.
GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.
LineageOS Android Distribution
Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.
I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.
I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.
AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tab
An alternative app store:
F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy
I feel like when I say ârelatableâ what I really mean is âresonant.â I donât want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.
As a society we have benefited so much from successful public health measures that we now have the privilege of declaring that we must not need them anymore
Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that donât use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%â in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people
Iâm literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history
You might say âoh well today we all have access to vitamins and toothpastes and dentists so we donât need those things in our food suppliesâ and boy do white people on social media loooove to fucking say that. But hereâs the thing: no, people donât all have easy access to those things. Thatâs privilege talking yet again
If women donât conform to beauty expectations, theyâre paid less.
âMadison, who works a customer service job at an airport spa, has an employee handbook that says âmakeup should be well maintainedâ and âhands and nails must be well manicured.â She says the few men she works with just ignore these guidelines âbecause theyâre meant for women but [it] doesnât explicitly say that.â Her wages ($13.25 per hour + 15% retail commission) do not include additional pay to purchase manicures or makeup. During her interview, her now-boss commented on how nice her makeup looked and how well her shoes matched her purseâcomments that make her feel like she needs to keep up that kind of appearance even though she already has the job.Â
Itâs well known that a persistent wage gap exists for women workers in the United States, a gap that becomes even wider when race, industry, age and geography are taken into account. But less frequently discussed is the often silent expectation around appearance imposed on women workers, which has its own financial costsâknown as the âgrooming gap.â The grooming gap refers to the set of social norms regarding grooming and appearance for women, including the time women workers must spend to conform to these norms and the material consequences it has on their lives.Â
Weâve all heard the common advice to âlook the partâ at work. For men, that can often just mean business casual clothing and a short haircut. For women, it can mean hours spent each week on makeup, hair styling and curating an outfit thatâs both attractive and professional.Â
The rules are usually unspoken; even when employers do not explicitly require workers to wear makeup, for example, women workers often feel required to wear it anyway.Â
Theyâre not wrong: Sociologists Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner found that physically attractive workers have higher incomes than average-looking workers, but that this relationship is eliminated when controlling for grooming in women. In other words, if you purchase the right clothes, makeup and haircut, higher wages are more within reach. Itâs true that men need to abide by certain grooming rules, too, but they are less complex, less expensive and less time consuming. Menâs haircuts, for example, often cost much less than womenâs haircutsâregardless of hair length. The grooming gap essentially constitutes a pay cut catch-22: If women donât conform, they are paid less; if they do conform, theyâre expected to use those higher wages on beauty products and grooming regimens.Â
Grooming costs for women can be extremely expensive; the global beauty industry, valued at $532 billion worldwide, directs aggressive advertising toward women to convince them they need to purchase a whole host of products to have a chance at being beautiful, well-liked or successful. The industry relies on maintaining impossible expectations around womenâs looks so it can continue to rake in enormous profits. One 2017 study found the average woman puts $8 worth of product on her face each day; another found the average woman spends up to $225,000 on skincare and makeup during her lifetime. And then thereâs the âpink taxâ: Studies confirm that, 42% of the time, products marketed to women are more expensive than comparable products targeted to men.Â
The grooming gap also results in a loss of free time: 55 minutes each day for the average woman, the equivalent of two full weeks each year. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFACWA), says that, in her industryâa workforce that is 79.3% womenâthe expectation around appearance literally âinterrupts your sleepâ: Flight attendants get minimal rest between flights, and that rest time is further shrunk because they are expected to appear âperfectly coifedâ before their next flight. Nelson says that all of her grooming tasks took 30â40 minutes each day (more than two hours in a five-day work week). Madison agrees: it takes her 45 minutes to do her makeup and style her hair before her 7 a.m. shiftâand she wakes up at 5 a.m. to get it all done. Prior to this job, Madison says she worked at the beauty department at Target, where she spent $200 on products every other week.Â
Restaurant and hospitality workers are perhaps hardest hit by the grooming gap, as they rely on tips to survive. When I was a barista in 2010â2011, the only official dress code rule was to wear closed-toed shoes, for safety. Still, I knew I had to show up looking pretty to pay the rent; I made less than $10 an hour and I needed the tips.
Katie, 36, a veteran bartender and server in Fort Smith, Ark., says at her current job, itâs âunderstoodâ she should wear makeup. At a previous restaurant, a manager even told her and her coworkers they would âmake better tips if [they] wore makeup.â
âBased on my own appearanceâweight fluctuations, makeup versus no makeup, jewelry versus no jewelryâthereâs a definite difference,â Katie says. She adds that she was passed over for the most lucrative bartending shifts at her previous job after overhearing her managers say they wanted âcuter girlsâ to bartend instead.
Multi-billion dollar industries also market fad diets and anti-aging products to women. Both Katie and Jeeva, 24, a bartender and member of UNITE HERE, the union representing hospitality, hotel and airport workers, worry about aging. âAs you get older, as a female bartender, your tips can go down,â Jeeva says. Katie says she âhope[s] to leave [the service industry] in the next 10 years, before I get too ugly.â
The grooming gapâs effects are compounded for women of color. According to Restaurant Opportunity Center, restaurant owners look for workers who are âclean-cut, [have] good hygiene or a professional appearance, all potential code words for race.â For instance, Black women spent $473 million on relaxers, weaves and other hair care in 2017, in part because of racist ideas that natural Black hair is not professional or attractive. Black workers annually spend nine times more on hair and beauty products than other workers.Â
For transgender women, too, there can be an added layer of work, stress and self-consciousness. Autumn, who transitioned while at her current publishing job in Washington, D.C., says she quickly realized how much time and energy it takes to perform femininity for work. She used to spend 20 minutes to get ready in the morning, but now takes at least 45 minutes. Autumn adds, âI have to do things that cis women donât have to⊠[but] itâs gotten easier with time and practice,â like tucking and dealing with facial hair. Because she presents extremely femme, Autumn says she hasnât dealt with enforcement around her appearance, but other women workers around the country have been disciplined and even fired for appearing insufficiently feminine. Women workers have suedâand wonâover gender discrimination that manifests as attractiveness discrimination.
Nat, a trans woman who works at a union in the Washington, D.C., area, says, âI didnât feel like I was allowed to be a woman if I liked masculine things. It delayed any kind of self-reflectionâ about gender and identity âfor such a long time.â
At work and in the world, all womenâcis and transâfeel the pressure to conform to normative standards of femininity and attractiveness. But the solution to this problem isnât to throw away all the eyeshadow or take out a new line of credit for weekly manicures. The solution is to organize together.â
I know that this is an Off Topic Tuesday post, but this can be tied into my blog theme. I don't know how many people are aware of the unconscious biases they have in regards to how differently they treat someone based on appearance, how those who are able to meet the standards of being conventionally attractive are afforded more kindness, and general good treatment, than those who can't or won't, and this is especially the case for women and other marginalized people.
I remember in secondary school a friend telling me how differently she was treated when she showed up to school with glasses, no makeup, and a sweatshirt vs contacts, makeup, and a more "feminine" outfit. She said it was like night and day.
On the days she showed up to school in glasses, no makeup, and a comfortable (but androgynous/unisex) outfit, she said she was ignored and dismissed so much more. People were more likely to treat her like she was boring, annoying, unintelligent, and like she had nothing worthwhile to contribute.
However, when she came to school with contacts, makeup, and a more "feminine" outfit, suddenly everyone was so much nicer to her. People wanted to talk to her, people treated her like she was funny and intelligent, people asked her what her opinions were and valued her contributions to the conversation.
Of course, in both scenarios she was still the same person, with the same intelligence, the same humor, the same mind. People just valued her differently based on how well she adhered to beauty standards. I don't think anyone was doing this consciously, which is why it's so important to talk about this and be more aware of this. Check our unconscious biases.
Or, recently another friend of mine shaved her head. Her hair wasn't super long before, but it was long enough to fall into a range considered "feminine".
In her words, after she shaved her head, she said "it's like the whole world has gotten a little colder, like someone turned down the temperature a few degrees." And she didn't mean that literally.
She talked about how after shaving her head, there was a total 180 in how customer service workers treated her. Before when she had hair, cashiers and servers would smile at her and make a little chit chat, but after shaving her head all she gets from customer service workers (including from the very same ones who would smile and be kind to her when she had hair) is a cold and dismissive attitude.
She said she also doesn't receive the small acts of kindness and general politeness she received from strangers before. When she had hair, strangers might have held a door for her, or picked up things for her she dropped, those sorts of things. But after shaving her head she no longer receives any of these small pleasantries, just an air of cold contempt and dismissal from most people around her.
Again, I'm not sure this is even consciously done, but unconscious biases can be pretty powerful, and result in people (especially women and other marginalized people) being punished for not fitting the standards of being conventionally attractive.
Longtime readers may be aware of how much I relish an excuse to bully a company, so I'm sharing the wealth;
Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparableâ harm to their brand.
To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.
So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.
I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile.
Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.
They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.
In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.
Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'
I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?
And if you do become a housewife, take steps to protect yourself. Make sure youâre legally married, for starters; stay-at-home girlfriends have very little legal recourse to claim their partnerâs assets in a breakup. Make sure your name is on the house deed/rental agreement, and have your car in your name, even if your spouse is paying for it. Have your spouse transfer money every month into an account solely in your name, so you can buy yourself things without needing permission, but also so you can save up to leave if needed.
If your spouse fights you on any of this, then donât quit your job. The tradwife to poverty pipeline is real, and so is financial abuse.
also, many women/people experience controlling behaviour and domestic violence from their partner for the first time during pregnancy. donât risk thinking âheâs just stressed, itâll get better when the baby comesâ because it wonât. neither you and your child will ever be safe with that man. get out as early and safely as you can
A good friend of mine married a pastor. She birthed, raised, and home schooled his SEVEN children. SEVEN. CHILDREN. They both agreed that she should do that, they both agreed that homeschooling was the best thing for their family, they both agreed to all of this.
She spent over 30 years doing this. For 30 years she didnât work outside the home. She didnât know the terms of their lease. She didnât have the passwords to âtheirâ bank account(s), âtheirâ assets.
He left her when she was in her fifties.
He said that he needed time to reflect and moved out of their house, but told her to focus on getting their last kid through high school (still homeschooled!) and he would take care of everything.
She reached out to the landlord months later asking where the lease renewal was only to find out it wasnât getting renewed. Because her husband hadnât paid the rent in OVER NINE MONTHS. The whole time he was promising her he was still taking care of her.
She and her sixteen year old youngest son found out they had to move out of their house with 3 weeksâ notice. She didnât have a job or work experience or a degree or any idea how to get these things in 3 weeks. She didnât own her own car. If she had not had friends to take her in, she and her son would have been literally out on the street.
It ruined that friendship, too. Itâs a lot to ask someone to put you up indefinitely while you try to put your life together. She burned a lot of bridges taking what anyone would or could give because she had no other choice.
She did, eventually, hard years later, get on her feet again. But it will always be hard and she will never be where she could have been in life if sheâd done things differently.
You might be very sure of your marriage. You might be very sure of your husband. He might love you now, and be a good man now, but the rest of your life will hopefully be a long, long time. People change. It CAN happen to you.
