Reading List #29: Double Whammy Edition (Patreon)

What's up guys. I didn't post a reading list all month so this one will be twice as nice, with 18 total suggestions.

1) Needful Things (Stephen King)

It's long as hell, but I couldn't pass up buying it when I spied it at Value Village for $3. It was sinister, depraved, and hilarious. I counted it as my pleasure read of the month. 

Read Length: Book

2) The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History (Peechington Marie) 2/27/18

I can't tell you how many times I've shocked someone with the news that the late Maya Angelou, one of the most respected and highly esteemed black women of all time, was once a sex worker. Maya Angelou's past is not one she herself obscured, but something that has been slyly diffused from her. I loved this essay for speaking on this.

Read Length: Short

3) Audrey Kitching Is A Myspace Queen Turned Energy Healer (Nayomi Reghay)

An exercise in white privilege. I remember her from my teenage years solely because I was an avid fan of Panic! At The Disco and knew she dated the lead singer for a while. Now, she's a scamming guru.

Kitching exists as a hologram online—no speaking engagements, or public appearances—and yet her name appears in wellness publications like Shape and Self, where she has become a trusted source for her knowledge of healing crystals.

If you want bubble gum pop culture analysis with an edge, this piece is for you.

Read Length: Long 

4) How the Demonization of “Gossip” Is Used to Break Women’s Solidarity (Silvia Federici)

In this chapter expert by Italian feminist Silvia Federici, get schooled on why "gossip" and its association with women have been subject to disdain.  You'll also read how this has impacted female relationships.  If you like etymology history, you'll really appreciate this excerpted chapter. After reading this, I want to check out her book, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women.

Then, in 1547, “a proclamation was issued forbidding women to meet together to babble and talk” and ordering husbands to “keep their wives in their houses.” Female friendships were one of the targets of the witch hunts, as in the course of the trials accused women were forced under torture to denounce each other, friends turning in friends, daughters turning in their mothers.

It was in this context that ‘gossip’ turned from a word of friendship and affection into a word of denigration and ridicule. Even when used with the older meaning it displayed new connotations, referring in the late sixteenth century to an informal group of women who enforced socially acceptable behavior by means of private censure or public rituals, suggesting that (as in the case of the midwives) cooperation among women was being put at the service of upholding the social order.

Read Length: Long

5. Pornhub is The Kinsey Report Of Our Time (6/11/17) Maureen O' Connor

A fascinating, infuriating, and funny look into the inner workings of pornhub, plus notes on what the site's most popular trends say about our country. 

Read Length: Long

6. Here's why you need to pay for your porn (Siri)

In relation to suggested read #5, check out this essay on why you should pay for your porn instead of using tube sites. 

Even though porn is stigmatized in our society, it serves a valuable function for the billions of men and women who watch it. Studies have shown that watching porn can help decrease your stress levels and improve your cognitive performance. It can even help improve your sex life. The human beings who contribute their minds and bodies to produce your beloved jerk-off material deserve your respect, and they deserve the right to be able to make a living.

Read this one and let me know your thoughts.

Read Length: Medium 

7. The Catholic Church Has No Moral Argument on Abortions (2/11/19) Jennifer Wright

The writer slams the sex-abuse-scandal riddled catholic church. I lived.

So, when people like Cardinal Dolan opine on profound evil of abortion, that’s not a fundamental church teaching. It’s a relatively new notion. And repeatedly discussing it now makes it almost seem as though they’re trying to distract from something. Like, for instance, those nuns that were being kept as sex slaves, exploited by bishops and priests. They made them get abortions.

Read Length: Short

8. What Catholic Church records tell us about America’s earliest Black History (2/27/19) Jane Landers

While many, including myself, have largely addressed 1619 as the year enslaved Africans first arrived to the British colonies, there were earlier Africans who arrived a century earlier with the Spanish. I think this part of history has been erased from the larger narrative because most American history starts with indigenous people (though not all the time smh) and the British colonies. An important tidbit to me:

Baptism into the Catholic faith was important because it cleansed black converts of the “stigma of original sin.” It also brought them into the “Christian brotherhood” of the church. Baptism also served an important social function. Families were linked in a system of reciprocal obligations between the baptized and his or her godparents, as also between the parents and godparents.

Read Length: Medium 

9. Stories of African-American women aging with HIV: ‘My life wasn’t what I hoped it to be’ (Thurka Sangaramoorthy) 

Heartbreaking.

...she is one of about 140,000 African-American women living and aging with HIV. While she is grateful to be alive, she faces multiple health challenges in addition to HIV, like hypertension, diabetes and breast cancer, that disproportionately plague African-American women. And they often struggle to take care of themselves and their families because of limited resources. In working with older African-American women who are HIV-positive, I learned about their individual stories.

Read Length: Medium

10. This Cruise Ship’s Kitchens Never Sleep, So For 24 Hours, Neither Did I (2/4/19) Amanda Shapiro

When I was about 14 or 15 I saw a Modern Marvels episode on The History Channel about cruise ships that blew my mind. Mainly, because it delved deeply into how mountains of food are made everyday for people in the middle of the ocean (and I love food!). When I went on a cruise back in September 2016, I was blown away by the selections of food. I'm talking platters of french toast sticks, pancakes, and waffles, next to pans of roasted potatoes and bacon for breakfast. Plus vats of oatmeal, omelette stands, cereal dispensers and collections of fresh fruit. Lunch included everything from tacos to General Tso's to cheeseburgers and different styles of fish. At the fancy sit-down dinner, there were three course meals with 2-3 options per course. Everything was all-you-can-eat and I ate like a pig. I thought it could get no better- until I read this article. My mouth watered. I need a cruise known for it's food ASAP. 

Read Length: Short

11. The hidden history of black nationalist women’s political activism (Keshia N Blain) 1/30/19

Black women are often written out of black nationalist history, but here Dr. Blain shines light on a few. 

During the Great Depression, Chicago was one of the key cities where black nationalist women organized. In 1932, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, a former member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, established an organization called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia which became the largest black nationalist organization established by a woman in the United States. At its peak, the organization attracted an estimated 300,000 supporters in Chicago and across the country.

Read Length: Short

12. The Trauma Floor: The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America (Casey Newton) 2/25/19

Holy shit. And they aren't even being paid well to sort through Facebook's grimiest posts. 

One, named Randy, would sometimes return to his car at the end of a work day to find moderators waiting for him. Five or six times over the course of a year, someone would attempt to intimidate him into changing his ruling. “They would confront me in the parking lot and tell me they were going to beat the shit out of me,” he says. “There wasn’t even a single instance where it was respectful or nice. It was just, You audited me wrong! That was a boob! That was full areola, come on man!”

Fearing for his safety, Randy began bringing a concealed gun to work. Fired employees regularly threatened to return to work and harm their old colleagues, and Randy believed that some of them were serious.

Read Length: Long

13. Reproductive coercion is abuse. But many women don’t even know it (Hilary Freeman) 1/9/2019

According to a new study, 1 in 4 women have been a victim of reproductive coercion, in which a partner sabotages their birth control or reproductive agency. 

This can manifest as either psychological abuse or physical violence, or both, and ranges from emotional blackmail to sabotaging contraception to, at the extreme end, deliberately bringing on an abortion by spiking a woman’s food or drink.

Read Length: Short

Related Read: The High Cost of Reproductive Coercion (Atima Omara)

14. Not All Mothers Are Loving and Kind (4/30/13) Melody T. McCloud M.D.

I saw a tweet recently in which someone accused people who don't obey their parents of being ungrateful. I thought of this piece I read a few years ago. It made me call my mother and tell her I love her. 

Read Length: Short

15. Meet Mamie Phipps Clark, the social psychologist who helped outlaw segregated schools (Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds) 

You've probably heard of The Doll Test, but have you heard much information about the wife of the husband-wife team that conducted the experiment? She was the first black woman to earn a degree in psychology from Columbia. 

Read Length: Short

16. The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching (Harvey Young) Dec. 2005

An analyzation of the white people who stole body parts from black lynching victims. What made these souvenirs so appealing? 

Read Length: Long

17. The Year in Hate: Rage Against Change (Heidi Beirich) 2/20/19

A guide to hate crimes and domestic terrorists in 2018. If you're interested in paying attention to the proliferation of white terrorism, check this out. 

Read Length: Long

18. Why Straight Men Are Joining Masturbation Clubs (EJ Dickson) 2/27/19

I had no idea this was a thing, but I'm fascinated. 

“It's a rite of passage and an essential part of the teenage male bonding ritual,” says Sean*, 31, who used to buddy bate with his friends when he was in his early teens. Sean came of age in the early aughts during the pre-Pornhub, post-Limewire era, when online porn was far less accessible than it is now, so he viewed communal masturbation more as a matter of convenience and less as a display of budding masculinity. But regardless of the impetus behind buddy bating, for some men, the urge to whip it out in front of your bros extends beyond adolescence, even though there are fewer options for them to dabble in that interest in adulthood.

Read Length: Medium