More to Hate

Last week, my six-year-old daughter went to theater camp for the first time. She was one of fifteen children. She found it delightful: dramatic and creative exercises culminated in a little play which the kids devised the script for. It was an incredibly wholesome experience, yet I couldn’t help but notice: there were twelve girls and just three boys. When it came time for the parents to watch the play, the gender disparity was equally striking: all but one of the girls chose to be heroes.

Content warning: misogynistic violence, medical negligence, death I’ve dedicated my work to understanding misogyny for well over a decade. And I’m only just beginning to understand the depth of its effects on girls and women. We can get a feel for this by asking: how many of our deaths are the preventable, shameful results of this form of injustice? How many of our deaths, in other words, are deaths by misogyny? Let me make it clear that misogyny doesn’t, in my book, just mean men hating women.

I’m currently offering a 50% off sale now through Sunday at midday (for new paid subscribers only). This is the largest discount I will ever give, and affords you your only chance to get a two-for-the-price-of-one subscription to both my newsletter and that of the brilliant Zawn Villinesin honor of our recent collaboration.

This conversation is a collaboration with the brilliant Zawn Villines for paid subscribers. To encourage paid support for both of our newsletters, which our work here crucially depends on, Zawn and I will both be running a 50% off sale now through Sunday at midday (for new paid subscribers only). This is the largest discount we will ever give, and affords you your only chance to get a two-for-the-price-of-one subscription to our work, which is truly complementary.

Every weekday just after 3pm, I stop work to go pick up my daughter. I don’t have to do this: because I don’t drive, I am just along for the ride with my husband. But I want to greet my six-year-old right after dismissal and get a sweet hug from her in the school foyer. We go from there to swimming or chorus or the farmer’s market, and host a playdate and dinner with her best friend at our house one day a week too.

“What time does music camp run this year in HomeTown, NY?” “Pick-up window for music camp in HomeTown, NY?” “What is the name of music camp for six-year-olds in HomeTown, NY?” “Email for music camp director in HomeTown, NY” “Why are my zinnia seedlings getting eaten?” “How to repel feral squirrels” “How to repel feral squirrels in HomeTown, NY” “What makes a good end-of-year teacher gift?” “Recipe for rhubarb bars” “GF recipe for rhubarb bars” “How to remove rhubarb leaves safely” “Can you...

Sigh. I’m going to level with you, dear reader: my toxic trait is checking newly released books’ rankings on Amazon. I do so with hope in my heart: that this terrific new book, which sometimes bears my blurb on the cover, will take off and find the readership it sorely deserves. Time after time after time, I wind up disappointed: serious, important books are not getting the traction they deserve, while vapid celebrity memoirs invariably dominate the bestseller lists.

The internet has been verklempt this week about the reception of the Algerian team for the World Cup in the mid-sized city of Lawrence, Kansas. Algerian flags are being flown far and wide—including at the unlikely venue of McDonald’s—and members of the community have shown up to practices and learned the Algerian national anthem. It’s undoubtedly a feel-good story.

A quick reminder: everyone is of course welcome here, but paid subscriptions are what enable me to spend the necessary time researching and writing this newsletter. And as with all of my essays that get into some more personal territory, I’m paywalling this one to avoid the abusive vissicitudes of the internet. Thanks for being readers. Is having a boyfriend cringe? If so, having a husband is clearly more so. And praising your husband publicly is so cringe as to be practically unforgivable.

My family recently adopted two kittens. We are so in love with these two—Kuiper and Luna—that my spouse jokes that 40% of our conversations are now about how nice our cats are. But in talking about their loveliness, I have noticed a slightly worrisome tendency, and one that challenges my previous assertion that we don’t compare animals: in fact, the instinct to reach for superlatives as praise is surprisingly recalcitrant.