Absolutely. There’s obviously a level at which sexual orientation is biologically determined, but sexual orientation should be distinguished from sexual identity, which is almost entirely a matter of culture.
Every letter in LGBTQ as well as all heteronormative expressions of sexual identity are perfect examples of social constructs. Hell, gender is a social construct. This isn’t controversial stuff. Social constructionism isn’t a critique. It’s just a frame of reference.
If you want to be subtle, buy him a Brooks Brothers Dog and Stripe Tie. It’s part of the unofficial uniform for racist, homophobic poli-sci majors, especially the ones who think graduating cum laude is something to brag about.
If you want to be not-so-subtle, buy him a hardcover copy of The Reagan Diaries and a Ronald Reagan Presidential Jelly Bean Jar. He’ll be forced to laugh like he gets the joke, but he’ll understand that you’re making an open declaration of war.
As a secret stocking stuffer, you should also sign him up for a membership in the ACLU. (Be sure and check the box that lets them share his personal information with other charities.)
It sounds as though whatever mental process you went through, you managed to embrace both your insignificance and your mortality. That’s a good thing, in spite of the circumstances.
You let go, and in letting go, you stumbled into some enlightenment. It should be said, though — the peace you’re experiencing is a manifestation of life, not death. You’ve been given a gift. Spend some time with this new mental state. Explore it. Learn from it. Don’t waste it by actually killing yourself.
You can let go without giving up.
The Newsroom is a Frankenstein’s Monster of pretense and formula sewn together with the fatty tissue of Studio 60, slapped around the rotting skeleton of The West Wing, and shocked back to life with the artificial relevance of last year’s current events and the sanctimonious wish-thinking of Aaron Sorkin’s out-of-touch, vaguely narcissistic, and ever-so misogynistic world view.
You find it intellectually stimulating because you are an intellectually average person easily distracted by Sorkin’s worn-out bag of tricks, and you are extremely entertained because you prefer to swallow your popular culture without having to chew it first.
That’s fine. Not everybody wants to burn calories thinking critically about the television they ingest. If you just want to kick back and watch a puppet show, I can’t blame you, but some of us can’t help but see the strings.
Police officers knowingly testify to some bullshit on the stand to justify why they pulled a black person over. Not stopping completely at a stop sign. Not signaling a turn 200 feet before an intersection. Fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. Patting someone down for “officer safety.” If I hear the phrase “fighting stance” once more time as a justification for beating the crap out of someone, I will cut a bitch. I actually read a police report where an officer said he shattered my client’s kneecap because he looked nervous. My middle-aged black client, who had never been in trouble, is arrested for the first time in his life and looked fucking nervous. AND THEY SHATTERED HIS KNEE.
But the institution protects these officers. Judges defer to their testimony. Prosecutors go out of their way not to secure an indictment on them when they kill someone. Cities will pay off the lawsuits so the complaints go quiet.
If anyone thinks that the anger in Ferguson is about this one particular white cop and this one particular black teenager, they are completely stupid. If anyone thinks that the “riots” and “looting” result from welfare-loving opportunists, they need to stand the fuck down. If every dumbass with an opinion and a Facebook account could have followed me around the courthouse for one damn week, there is NO WAY they would write the vile drivel they do. But they do. Because they do not understand. And they do not want to understand. Life is harder when you’re black in America. Simply because you are black.
Sorry to rant, but I get so hand-shakingly angry at some of the commentary I’ve seen, I just had to say something.
You speak the truth. I fucking know for a fact that you do.
As it happens, a sociologist friend of mine is finishing up what will become an important and controversial book in which she definitively proves what you already know to be true about racism in the court system.
I’ll let you know when it’s published.
No, you don’t get to bite. We can’t at least agree.
Two wrongs? Fuck you. You don’t get to equate the summary execution of an unarmed teenager with whatever irrelevant bullshit might have happened at that convenience store. They are completely unrelated incidents with no bearing on one another in any way whatsoever.
One has absolutely nothing to do with the other — absolutely nothing — and the very idea that you would weigh them together in the same sentence makes you a victim blaming piece of shit.
This is not about two wrongs. You don’t get to frame it that way. This is about the behavior of one police officer who killed a boy out of anger and fear. This is about one grave injustice endemic of an entire system of oppression. There is no other offense here. None.
Anyone who even brings up the convenience store in any discussion having to do with the shooting death of Michael Brown is validating the racist system of oppression that lets a cop shoot an unarmed black kid and get away with it.
I don’t give a fuck if you’re just playing devil’s advocate, and you don’t get any extra credit for calling Darren Wilson a pig. Of course he’s a pig. He’s a murderous fucking pig, and you’re a magnificent asshole for even mentioning Michael Brown’s past behavior in a discussion about the manner in which he was killed.
Honey, no. Take a step back and analyze the things in your life that desperately need to be true in order for you to justify your belief system, because those are the things that define you.
You are defined by your need to call whatever might have happened at that convenience store a robbery. You are defined by your need to label Michael Brown a criminal. You are defined by your need to vindicate Darren Wilson in the brutal shooting death of an unarmed teenager.
These desperate things define you, and it’s pathetic, because I know you also think you’re making an important point, but all you’re really doing is revealing yourself to be smug, racist, and willfully ignorant piece of shit.
Now go sit in the corner of whatever small, sad room you occupy, and think about how little you matter.
Do you think Bill Cosby will ever get in trouble for all the women he raped?
He is in trouble. Criminal penalties aren’t the only way society can make a man suffer consequences, and not every prison has bars. Bill Cosby will go down in history as a serial rapist. His reputation and legacy are destroyed. The fame he used to his advantage all these years is now the very thing that will torture him for the rest of his life.
His remaining days will be lived in a fish tank of celebrity exile, isolated yet permanently on display. He’ll have his fair share of supporters and apologists, but they’ll just be the usual assortment of the ignorant, malignant, and irrelevant. Nothing will stop this fresh wave of public opinion, and whatever soul he has left will be crushed by it.
Ultimately, this will be what kills him. Watch. Bill Cosby won’t make it through 2015, and when they show his face with that Pudding Pop smile during the death montage at the Academy Awards, they’ll be cutting away to shots of stern looking celebrities refusing to applaud.
Will you figure out a budget for me? I make 45k a year and live in Chicago. It’s probably not complicated—I’m just young and an idiot.
I started to respond to your question and then realized that over and over again my answer was just pointing you to Chelsea Fagan’s phenomenal new blog called The Financial Diet. (It really is great. You should all follow it.) Anyway, I thought it might be neat to have Chelsea answer your question directly as a guest contributor, and she very graciously agreed. Here’s what she said:
So, the first step to making a budget is asking yourself some basic-but-essential questions about your financial life: What are your goals? How do you spend your money every month? What are your weak spots? The real answers will vary in practice (you’re only human after all), but they’re a solid starting point for establishing your various categories of spending.
If you’re single earning $45,000 and you live in Chicago – where the city tax rates are much less insulting than here in New York — your take home is probably about $2700 a month, give or take. So let’s use that for the budget. Since I know nothing about you other than your salary and city, my answer will have to be somewhat generic, so apologies in advance if this does not accurately portray your real-life spending habits.
The first thing you’ll want to look at is rent. It’s usually the biggest chunk of your salary, and it dictates how much you’ll have leftover to do other things. In Chicago, you can either err to the luxurious side and get your own studio in a cool neighborhood for about $1300, or you can find a roommate in a slightly less-cool area for around $800. Having once been in a situation where I paid a full 50 percent of my take-home pay in rent every month, I can assure you that not only does your quality of life suffer greatly as a result, but no apartment is actually worth that kind of financial sacrifice. So let’s say you pick something in the middle, a nice roommate situation with a big space (maybe your own bathroom) in a fun part of town, and you pay $1,000 a month.
Now you’re down to $1,700.
There are several things you can budget for at this juncture, but the most adult-like and productive is, “How much do I want to be saving every month?” No matter what you choose, the most essential component of saving is that You. Do. Not. See. The. Money. Ever. Whatever money you are budgeting, it needs to go straight into some faraway account that does not have a card attached to it, one that you cannot access on a whim. That money should never hit your checking account, and your brain should never process it as “money I have access to.” Set up an automatic transfer every time you get your paycheck for the amount. For now, let’s say your savings goals are on the conservative side, and you put $200 into an untouched account per month. It’s not a ton, but it’s a good place to start if you’re not used to saving.
Now you’re at $1,500.
This the point at which you usually start asking yourself a lot of serious questions about your spending habits, and bring in the help of programs like Mint, which can analyze your checking account and tell you how you’ve been using your money in detail. You may be shocked at the amount of clothes you buy each month, or how little you spend on groceries. (I can almost guarantee that you will be shocked to the point of disgust at how much you spend on alcohol.) Usually the food/entertainment/shopping, or “living” section of your budget breaks down into something like $300 a month on groceries and household essentials, $300 a month on bars and restaurants, and another $300 a month on retail shopping and transportation.
And if this sounds like a lot, I can assure you that once you count all of your random trips to Sephora or Forever 21 for a throwaway dress, you will understand that “shopping” is much more than just “I am allowing myself the ability to purchase two nice, carefully-chosen wardrobe items each month.” And restaurants add up more quickly than anything else in your budget, without exception. Shopping and going out are huge, sprawling, monstrous chunks of our budgets that tick up in increments of $10 here and $15 there, and can leave us with nothing to our names but credit card balances and the hazy memories of all the martinis we drank while wearing cute but unnecessary new sweaters, so it’s better to err on the generous side with these categories at first to learn how much you’re actually spending and give yourself a chance to curb any recklessness slowly.
Now you’re at $600, but I assume you have insurance taken out of your check each month, and if you are going with the non-cheapie package, let’s put it at about $200 per month for medical, dental, and two pairs of glasses a year.
Now you’re at $400, but let’s say a $150 of that is going to cable and utilities, and another $50 to your phone. This brings you to $200 of mad money, which, if nothing else comes up – and something always comes up – you can do with as you please.
But this is a very generous budget, one that doesn’t take into account any student loans, credit card debt, or whether you live in suburban Chicago and need a car. This is the budget of someone who lives in the city with a $45,000 salary and nothing else to really worry about in life. If you have, say, $700 a month in student loan payments or you need $400 a month to cover all the costs associated with owning a car, the vast majority of this budget is going to take a huge hit. You’re not going to be able to go out much, you’ll have to live in a crappy apartment with a bunch of roommates, and you may only be able to save $100 a month.
The point of having a budget, though, even if you don’t have a ton to work with, is very similar to calorie counting as a means to eat better. It doesn’t mean you’re going to change your entire life on some sort of crash diet, it just means that you are going to be aware of what is going in versus what is coming out, and enable yourself to put something aside in a conscious, deliberate manner. Even if you have nearly no money to work with after all of your bills, it’s still important to set goals and track your spending for the little amount you are able to go out, and try your best to live within the parameters you’ve set. Because there is nothing worse than being blindsided by an unexpected expense you can’t pay, or a suddenly drained checking account. If (or, rather, when) that happens, you will be glad that you planned ahead.
It took me a while, but I finally realized that I was in pursuit of the story—not spirit; coolness—not compassionate vulnerability. I was a libertine because libertines are cool. I could spit the feminist justification for my escapades—and my tireless pursuit of them—with rapid ease. I dropped my sexual achievements in passing whenever I could to seem more adult, and I’d exploit men trying to ensure that my list of achievements always expanded.
I blame a lack of attention from boys throughout adolescence, and what was probably an insidious insecurity about not being desirable for what I did this past year. You’re most certainly not at fault for that. But I suppose you lost some credibility for me when I realized that your advice often kept me on that track. Specifically, I think of your celebration of libertine values; your consistent dictum, “He’s not the first and he won’t be the last” (maybe true, but I really commodified men—and I cannot stress the verb ‘commodify’ more—abiding by this philosophy); and the overall lifestyle you seemed to espouse. But you know you sell cool: from the absurd manicures to the Hollywood parties to the men. You know you’re a brand. You never claimed to be otherwise.
I’m not a hater in any sense of the word—perhaps just a thoughtful critic. I still owe you a lot: I’m much less whiny than I used to be. I write this to you now because I’m curious if you have any thoughts on this sort of problem—not justification, since I doubt I’m telling you things you don’t know. This platform isn’t really conducive to a dialogue, so I don’t expect that. Just, what do you think?
I think you should keep writing. You’re good at it. Stay a thoughtful critic without burning out. Don’t allow your skepticism to decay into cynicism.
Right now you’re establishing an identity while testing the depth of your independence. Your womanhood is freshly weaponized. Sexual exploits are still a novelty. It sounds like you may have gotten distracted by a bit too much belt notching, but that’s perfectly understandable, especially considering you seem to have learned so much from it so quickly.
You’re deep in your first period of adult self-exploration. You’re developing your own real-world moral philosophy, and that’s a good thing. I don’t see you describing a problem here. At worst, you’re describing behavior that is problematic, but you’re already ahead of the game because you recognize it.
Think of this phase as a process of amending your own personal constitution. Let the past go, let yourself change, and get good at forgiving your former self. Refer back to this every few years and appreciate how far you’ve come and how full of shit both of us were.
Again, keep writing. You’re exactly the kind of person who should.