A Preface To Life Lessons
Notes:
I recently got called an abuse apologist on r/RomanceBooks for my everlasting love for Sebastian St. Vincent and Lisa Kleypas’ Devil in Winter and then the person deleted their comment. Guess they can’t handle the truth!!!!! Sad!!!
I told Anita that I don’t feel guilt for things I do or don’t do but I feel guilt for my very existence on this planet and that’s very deep and profound or whatever but it’s also true. Like, being raised by people who fundamentally don’t feel guilt did a number on me; alternatively:
I enjoy making men very aware I’m smarter than them even though I dress like a JCrew catalog threw up.
Being raised by a man who likes and respects women made the realization that a lot of men virulently hate women extremely jarring. For instance, last night, Dua Lipa was the guest on The Colbert Report and she was asking Colbert questions about his faith and my dad’s response when I sent him the video was “Idk her but she seemed very intelligent and well-spoken.” I don’t know if I’m off-base, I feel like a lot of men of my dad’s age, especially with his upbringing and background, wouldn’t see a 20-something pop-star that wears a lot of revealing clothing and go “She seems like an intelligent and profound young woman.” And, I know he means it.
Someone pointed out that the entire discourse online is dominated by people who scored higher on the verbal SAT than on the math and everything suddenly clicked into place.
What I’m Reading:
Germany’s Anti-vaccination History Is Riddled With Anti-Semitism By Edna Bonhomme: Sobering, tragic, and extremely timely.
The Plan Was Simple: Infiltrate MAGA World and Tell Everyone What She Saw. Then She Was Found Out. By Ali Breland: All I have to say about this piece is that I enjoy being the only person who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries who also loves Hillary Clinton.
Stop Hyperbolizing Language By Tyler Dinucci: As someone who has dated casually and would categorically ruin anybody’s life who made viral TikToks about how I didn’t text them back after being extremely nice to them on the date, I have to be Team West Elm Caleb, I’m sorry to say. I’m not excusing anything actually abusive Caleb may have done but like, it’s not a mortal sin to hook up with someone on a Friday night and have another date on a Saturday like this isn’t Victorian England lol.
“The Women Who Had Abortions Before Roe v. Wade” By Ilana Panich-Linsman and Lauren Kelley: Sometimes, I think about how the women in my family who came before me would have benefited from access to abortion and I get overwhelmed by how different their lives could have been. There is no feminism without bodily autonomy, there is no bodily autonomy without access to abortion. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University by Gabriel Sherman: There’s nothing so all-American as protestant hypocrisy, and the Falwell family exemplifies it better than everybody else in the country.
Lastly, I am still Stassi Schroeder.
