‘“We” think these things but “we” are wrong’ articles always annoy me, because they never actually represent what I think. In this case it’s extra-blatant, since the author spends at least half the article trying to convince us about what supposedly we already think.
As recently as in “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”, Prohibition was portrayed as being created and enforced by rich white men. Yeah, that’s a fantasy movie, but it tried to make most things besides the wizard part realistic. Nobody in any major review said, “the senator is a man who supports Prohibition, what’s with that?”
I don’t remember where I heard it, but the narrative I know about women for prohibition was a sympathetic one. In essence: men would come home drunk and abusive, and since there were few options for women to leave home, one could at least try to stop them from being drunk.
To me, the most amazing part, which I’m sure I once knew but had forgotten, was that Carrie (Carry) Nation had died years before Prohibition.
All the men in positions of power who promoted and ratified Prohibition, and all the women who worked at the grassroots level, and yet the one name we can all remember is for someone who has been made into a caricature for her ‘unladylike’ behavior and who wasn’t even alive during that time.
Which to me is a good example of how sexism works in non-obvious ways.
She was included as a character on Murdoch Mysteries in a recent season. They portrayed her as super ladylike (even the hatchet), but very rigid. I think it was a commentary on all activists who refuse to compromise on the slightest detail, to the point of driving away those who mostly, but not completely, agree with them.
It depends on how you react to the trope of regular TV characters interacting with actors playing famous people, and how much you’re into turn-of-the-century Toronto. Murdoch Mysteries gets accused of anachronism often, but they pass every time I fact-check them. I like it in spaced-apart doses.
The synopsis of this episode is Nation arrives in Toronto to raise Temperance support (already very popular at the time). One regular character falls in with her – just when her late-teens son starts experimenting with whiskey.
“A lot of people here bad-mouth my daughters,” he says. “If they see them speaking on a cellphone, 10 people come to my shop and tell me: ‘Your daughter is chatting to so-and-so.’ They try to say they have loose characters.
It’s amazing how “loose character” turns out to be whatever threatens the power of the powerful. In the US, “loose character” in a woman would be having sexual relations outside of marriage; in a low-caste village in India, “loose character” is to not do that, as those kinds of relations are what’s expected of low-caste women.
It’s sad that “morality” for women often just means “do what men want you to do.”
I swear sometimes the NYT prints these shitposts just to expose the shitposters for what they are, then my eyes drift past the title of the latest Ross Douthat column.
Wow, I didn’t know that NYT were the ones that published that ungodly heap of crap.
[I]f you gave up your [smartphone] device for a year, you would have time to make love about 16,000 times (assuming you’re like most Americans and your lovemaking sessions last an average of 5.4 minutes, not counting foreplay)
First off, it’s way more socially acceptable to use your smartphone on the bus, while waiting in line, or even under the desk during boring meetings. Okay, that last part may or may not be true depending on where you work, but my point still stands. Also, I can read books on my phone, impressive textual body art notwithstanding, and I can use my phone to communicate with people all around the world about interesting things I never would have known otherwise. Men, when was the last time you’ve ever communicated with something you’ve had sex with, let alone about anything interesting?
Speaking of which, 5.4 minutes of sex is like 5.4 minutes of showering. It’s enough to get you wet, not nearly enough to be satisfying, and you’re probably still feeling dirty afterward. What must this guy’s sex life be like where he thinks this “average American” Honda Civic of sex acts is something to aspire to once, let alone 16000 times in a year?
