How California makes its own citizens: It started with in-state tuition. Then came driver's licenses, new rules designed to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children. And on Monday, in a gesture heavy with symbolism, came a new law to erase the word "alien" from California's labor code. Together, these piecemeal measures have taken on a significance greater than their individual parts — a fundamental shift in the relationship between California and its residents…
I take a seat at a neighborhood dive my best friend and I have never been to. I told her on the way there that we should have an exit strategy. She asked me why I’m so afraid. I consider my perspective as a trans woman versus hers as a cis woman. I explain, abstractly, how self-abnegation of one’s gender identity may lead to vulnerability, that the ethos of transmisogyny leached into me like a…
Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter's advice columnist, send it along to [email protected]. Dear Bear, I had a thing with a boy. In the way that one does sometimes. To make a long story short it turned out that he wanted more from the situation than I was willing to give, something he made clear via a…
The greatest possible good in life is never to be yelled at. There is no higher goal, no purer aim. There is no achievement sweeter, no more towering legacy, than to make it from birth to death without ever having once being yelled at. Better never to go anywhere, never to do anything, if the end result is to go through life without someone having yelled at you. Sweeter than immortality, more precious than fame,…
I got obsessed with
Oz
a few a months ago, when I rewatched the entire show as I was unpacking the house. If you don’t know it—I pity you—
Oz
, produced by Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, is the fictional depiction of a prison and its inmates. It got decent reviews, but many critics were put off by the violence. “I am starting to think that some of the violence is excessive,” wrote the
Baltimore Sun
's David…
Kelly Davio's previous Waiting Room columns for The Butter can be found here. As a woman, you never know when the question is coming—only that it is. You may be having a perfectly innocuous conversation about the traffic, your favorite brand of peanut butter, or even your latest dental work when someone springs it on you: “You have kids, right?” This spring, while I was representing the literary journal I co-edit at a small…
I'm not saying that life in the ancient world was easy, but I am saying that I could have probably invented the fulcrum, if someone hadn't beaten me to it by several thousand years. Ancient Ionians and Egyptians and Persians and Medes and whatnot got to invent all the obvious things; all that remains to this degenerate generation is Apps and new things to put truffle oil in. "I think we should measure shapes." congratulations,…
Why There Actually Should be MORE Crying in Baseball Dottie and Kit Milk Cows by Hand: The True Radicalism Hidden in A League of Their Own Marla Hooch and the Tough Path to Success for Women That Men Don’t Want to Fuck That Problematic Pissing Scene Female Athletes Sexualized So They Can Play: How Nothing Has Changed One Patronising Moment With Women of Colour: How A League of Their Own Influenced Girls…
If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk, because charity encourages helplessness and ingratitude. When you give him the milk, he'll probably ask you for a straw. Altruism does not result in gratefulness; it results in a sense of expectation and entitlement in the receiver. He has been given something for nothing. What have you taught him about the value of his own labor? Nothing. You have…
I will always remember that the call to action initiating the movement was organic – that there was no organizing committee, no charismatic leader, no church group or school club that led us to the streets. It is powerful to remember that the movement began as everyday people came out of their homes and refused to be scared into silence by the police. It is powerful, too, to remember the…
In my line of work, I come across the names of many, many high schools—every high school in Canada, in fact. So I began a tally with myself of the number of schools named after women—at first out of curiosity, and later after developing something of a righteous rage.
Many schools in Canada and the US are named after their towns, and Canada’s wealth of delicious place names gives these
"When thou hast seen Satyron the Socratic, think of either Eutyches or Hymen, and when thou hast seen Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus, and when thou hast seen Alciphron think of Tropaeophorus, and when thou hast seen Xenophon think of Crito or Severus, and when thou hast looked on thyself, think of any other Caesar, and in the case of every one do in like manner. Then let this thought be in thy mind, Where…
I’ve always loved the sound of the words Fertile Delta. The liquidic sound of the vowels coupled with the l, the hard D of delta, Greek for change, speaks to the power of a seasonal, shape-shifting body. Fertile Crescent makes another lovely pair. Crescent, so soothing, this half-moon, this womanly way to describe the cradle of civilization. Fertile, crescent, cradle, delta. The opposite of these words: barren.
