round-up: 3/21

reading recs, quotations, tweets, etc.

Mar 22, 2024

Happy Thursday!

Here’s what I have for you today:

Housekeeping
What I’m reading
Quotations
Tweets

& a disclaimer, again: Things are mostly terrible right now, and the violence is appalling, and there are many people out there who have addressed and do address it better than I ever could, so I’m not getting on a soapbox here—this will just be your weekly round-up featuring what I’ve been reading and thinking through, like usual.

Things to read:

Housekeeping:

I’ve been saddled with part-time school and full-time work and an absolute nightmare of a living situation, all of which unfortunately play into this newsletter and its abridged form. In any case, I still like sharing what I’m reading, even if it’s far less than I would like, so thank you for still following along even now.

What I’m reading:

And:

What I’m watching: Why Women Kill
What I’m eating

Quotations:

What do we want? I want a world where my sexed body doesn’t constrain my access to public life. I want a world where women have as much money and as much political power as men do, and as much freedom to shape their own lives. I want a world where women’s work isn’t valued less or paid less, and I want a world where more men do the things we call “women’s work.” I want women to have control over their own bodies, including the freedom to decline sex or have it, to decline motherhood or pursue it, without their health or their dignity being infringed upon by others. I want the entrance to every abortion clinic to be clear and quiet. And when the doctor places the baby in the new mother’s arms and says, “Congratulations, it’s a girl,” I want those parents to have no expectations or demands for what that child’s life will look like, only excitement and joy at all the things she might become.

-Moira Donegan

There can be no doubt that our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of “romantic paternalism” which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal but in a cage.

-Justice Brennan

Though it’s probably not what a therapist would call healthy, my suspicion of words is great for navigating intimate relationships, particularly the romantic ones: I don’t care what you say, only what you do. Talk is cheap and action is dear.

-David Davis

Then
again this stub-
born patch
of crabgrass is just
big enough to get down
flat on our backs
with eyes wide open and face
the whole gray sky just
as a good drizzle
begins I know
we’ve had a monsoon
of grieving to do
which is why
I promise to lie
beside you
for as long as you like
or need
We’ll let our elbows
kiss under the downpour
until we’re soaked

-Patrick Rosal

My darling here
is the door I promised
Here
is our broken bowl Here
                        my hands
In the home of our dreams
the windows open
in every
weather—doused
or dry—May we never
be so parched

-Patrick Rosal

Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.
And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey.
Goodbye old friend.
Endless love, see you down the road

-Leonard Cohen

I’m attached to dirt: to the grit
of stones, pulverized metal from
the slag heap, I learned touch
from air, I fashioned love from
strangers.

-Jan Beatty, “Drag”

How many times I’ve dreamt me open.

-Zefyr Lisowski, “One Function of the Line Is to Order, Another Is to Cut”

Fat activism is much older than me. By now, most of us here have heard the official origin story: In 1967, there was a "fat-in" in New York City's Central Park. Hundreds of people gathered to reject fatphobia and "diet culture". Two years later, NAAFA was founded by Bill Fabrey and Lew Louderbach. Around this time, the Fat Underground, often discussed as the more radical counterpart to NAAFA, formed out of the Radical Therapy Collective, was coalescing in California.

-Marquisele Mercedes