News of the Week/Month/Decade: MALLORY ORTBERG IS THE NEW DEAR PRUDENCE. Rejoice!! Ask her for advice!!! Submit questions for her Monday live chat here!!!!

This week, Nicole educated us on Maggie Trudeau, true Canadian hero and an intriguing and mistreated political spouse if ever there was one.

November is National Adoption Month, and I finally tackled a trend I have long found quite unsettling, as an adoptee: adoption crowdfunding campaigns. I’ll be blogging a bit about adoption this month, and am hoping to publish some great freelance pieces as well. If you have an essay in mind, holler at me.

Be sure you read Kayla Whaley’s excellent piece on her childhood summers at a camp for disabled kids, friendship versus community, and the problem with “normal” or “just like the abled” as a goal for those with disabilities.

Kea Krause on her dad, his alcoholism, and their sailing together is so, so good:

Maybe he keeps his drinking reeled in now, as he tells me he does. But I still cower from holidays and gatherings at which, quite often, booze can still get the best of him. There’s just no move to steer him away from that particular swell, so I gave up fighting and now only brace for it when I sense it’s coming.

I know now my sailboat was the first thing I ever really cared for. I was terrified of it and the responsibility required to make sure it was always all right. Sometimes I would stare at the little boat, its pert mast pointing skyward, and wonder what it wanted from me. Other times, on the water, we were one. In time, I understood that I would forever be scared of the things I loved the most, and that boats sail upon oceans, bodies from which you should never turn away.

Females can be sad or glad
But females are all very bad
Why are they all sad, glad, bad?
Human nature. Ask your dad.
Some are thin
And some are fat
Neg them all
They asked for that
—“Red Pill, Blue Pill: A Tale for MRA Children”

I never knew how much I needed this, but I really, really did: Unsolicited Advice For The Six Wives Of Henry VIII, Working Within Their Social Parameters And Not Suggesting They Just Invent Feminism Because That’s Anachronistic

Will never stop thinking about Christina Tesoro’s brave, haunting essay on consent, non-consensual sex, and trauma:

We know it before there are words for it. We know it when there aren’t words to describe exactly what happened. The edges of a violation are not drawn in ink or stone or sand. They aren’t even written on the body, not always.

I’m so pleased that we’re now publishing Liana Finck’s cartoons every week.

God knows the bitterness in my soul, Elizabeth.