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script-a-world · 4 years

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(sorry this is long) I'm creating a fantasy matriarchal society that's a combination of like America post WW2 and like the amazons/valkyries crossed with magical girls. I could use some help figuring out the gender dynamics, since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them. I'm trying to figure out if it's better to have the men be primary caregivers (1/?)

since there’s no reason to assume that the gender that gives birth has to be the caregivers) or if I should go the “matriarchal society would value childrearing above other jobs” route. Some thoughts I had: Women are the main magic-users in society (magical girl/amazons blessed directly by the god who rules the city with power)and that perhaps all young women are expected to go through military service of some sort before becoming matrons, politicians and doctors. (2/?)

Maybe women are associated with Life and Death and “important duties” that revolve around them, including duties regarding both killing and saving lives. So healing, leading armies, fighting, hunting, childbirth (possibly care?) and politics are feminine jobs, while “lesser duties” that revolve more around menial labor are relegated to men (manual labor, maintenance, ‘uneducated’ jobs, support jobs like scribe and secretary, cooking, cleaning, perhaps some jobs like fashion design or art). (3/?)

Do you think this is a good balance? What are some other ways I could divide gender roles? The world situation is a magical land with about early 20th century level tech (trains and private schools and like phones/radios).Also, what is the best way to objectify men in this society? I was thinking of making it so men are seen as useless/only for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure and siring children to women. (4/?)

They don’t’ actually create children or take the ‘important jobs’ (the poor dears just don’t have the brains for it, they’re too simple and direct, men don’t have the emotional maturity to handle serious issues, they lack empathy, they only want sex anyway so it’s not like you need to worry about their emotional needs, etc). I’d love some suggestions on how a society like this might work or if there are other ways to divide the gender roles, (5/?)

as well as some ways men might experience objectification in society. How would fashion be different, and how would this society put pressure on men to look or act in certain ways (and women as well). Any suggestions? Thanks, and sorry for the long question(6/?)

Mod Miri Note: If you have a question that requires multiple asks, please use the google form! That way there’s no risk of parts of the question being lost.

Tex: “Do you think this is a good balance?” No, I do not. I disagree with the notion that a group of people ought to be objectified, neglected, abused, pigeon-holed, or otherwise mistreated under the guise of inversion as a way to tout a certain prescription of thought. I think this methodology perpetuates stereotypes, and with stereotypes come all the -isms that are used as excuses to treat people poorly just because they’re different from the originating group.

I’m going to be radical and say “none of the above”. There’s a few reasons for my answer, but aside from the brief overview in the previous paragraph, let me go through and try responding to all of your points in a more precise manner.

Let’s start with American culture post WWII - and I’m going to assume that, because of this choice, you’re working from an American perspective. This is important! But I’ll handle that detail in a bit.

Post-WWII culture is heavily influenced by WWII culture. For women, this meant enlistment in the military, as well as filling the gaps in the domestic labor force left by men being shipped off (History.com, The Atlantic). Their service in the military - quite often voluntary - was as critical and crucial as their domestic work (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2, Wikipedia 3). They usually received lower pay than men, true (though interestingly the women in the UK were often treated better; Striking Women), though governments of the time admitted that without women the war effort would have crumpled.

Rosie the Riveter is a popular piece of propaganda (where it was also considered patriotic for women to join the workforce and military service; National Women’s History Museum), but don’t let that dissuade you from thinking that women were not recognized for other types of work during the war. Many women in the US were recognized for their military service (USO), and other women’s histories endure today - Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Wikipedia), Vitka Kempner (Wikipedia), and Virginia Hall (Wikipedia). I’m going to toss in the official synopsis of Queen Elizabeth II’s involvement in her own military to round things out (The Royal Family), complete with a picture of her in uniform (Wikipedia).

Many women after the war went back to strictly domestic duties, and I think that parallels their wartime efforts - both situations are of the “all hands on deck” type, but the play of gender roles here means that the duties of a functioning society are divvied up by different functional spheres - and make no mistake, men and women relied on each other equally as much to cover the gaps, despite the sexism inherent in modern Western society. The difference between war and non-war time cultures was that the latter wasn’t necessarily cultivated by patriotism that could unite the different “factions”. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History gives a thorough examination of this topic.

The following era - typified by the birth of the Baby Boomer generation - saw a marked increase in economic prosperity (Wikipedia). With that came increased social mobility for women (Citation 1), usually catalyzed by the actions of their fathers (Citation 2). This may typically be achieved by consistent, conscientious public policy formation (Citation 3). In short, many cultures - if they haven’t already - are realizing that it’s good for business to let women control how they participate in society and the flow of money.

In the US, this was precipitated by the boom of social development (American History; archived version). Aside from the Truman administration negotiating price fixing to prevent inflation, a significant factor was the passing of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill). This primarily benefited the Greatest Generation, though other pertinent legislation by the 79th Congress benefited the Silent Generation onwards: the Fair Deal, Revenue Act of 1948, Taft-Hartley Act, Employment Act of 1946, National School Lunch Act, and Hobbs Act.

It’s debatable how well this impacted long-term economic development, considering the almost immediate rise of McCarthyism in the US in 1947, which was heavily intertwined with the Truman Doctrine that precipitated the Cold War. The results of the war, at least economically, were… mixed (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2). I have no doubt that this impacted the social mobility of women in all affected countries - which is all of them, but I’m sure hairs could be split on this if you wish.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s tackle the Amazons.

The modern, popular interpretation (that is slow to be shaken by archaeological evidence) is mostly mythological (Wikipedia). While some ideas are thrown in the way of a Minoan Crete ancestry to the myth, there are more similarities drawn to the Scythian and Samartian cultures on the Eurasian Steppe (CNET). It’s possible that instead of the equally-extreme pole end of the gender dichotomy that is patriarchy-matriarchy, the Scythians just scandalized the Athenians with a comparatively more fluid society (Smithsonian Magazine).

As for Valkyries… there’s been a revival of them in pop culture, probably as a net-casting to see what’s out there aside from Amazons. TVTropes covers the many, many ways media utilizes them as a trope, to varying degrees of mythological and cultural accuracy. As they state, valkyries are a form of psychopomp, as they decide who among the battlefield’s dead will go to Valhalla (ruled by Odin) or Fólkvangr (ruled by Freya). Freya seems to have assumed the “type” (as opposed to characteristics salient to a particular individual) of a valkyrie, as the female counterpart the warrior archetype. To wit, Freya herself may be a type (Wikipedia).

Here’s where the issue gets thorny - modern popular understanding of valkyries, and by extension Scandinavian women, is skewed through the modern lens.

@fjorn-the-skald has a lovely series called Viking History: Post-by-Post, or An Informal Crash Course & A Historical Guide to the Vikings, that typically focuses on medieval Iceland. In his post “Lesson 13.c - Women in the Viking Age, Part III: Were Women “Vikings”?”, discusses the particular penchant of modern times to romanticize and/or skew history to their own biases - in this instance, how medieval Icelandic women functioned in their culture, as well as how valkyrie myths play into this.

The TL;DR of that is: “viking” women were a societal anomaly, the battlefield was a male domain (and they were expected to die on it), a woman’s prowess of the domestic sphere was highly respected to a level often equivalent to men, and the domestic sphere was the sphere of commerce. Scandinavian culture prized strong women, just as they prized strong men, and their culture rested upon the concept of different genders having their own distinct, complementary, and equal domains.

Fjörn builds upon this history in an ask about gender roles outside the usual dichotomy of male-female. Valkyries, and shield-maidens, may be classed as a third gender in medieval Scandinavian culture, because women were temporarily occupying the male role in their society. While valkyries are of divine origin, shield-maidens are not, though they seem to have taken on a supernatural bent by performing feminine qualities while living in the male sphere (something that they can literally wear, by the donning of their armor).

That probably comes across as distasteful to, especially, a modern American perspective, but many ancient cultures are like that. There’s a footnote on that ask about links to a contemporary perspective of same-sex relationships, as well, to round out that talking point.

With those historical and mythological details discussed, let’s move on to magical girls.

Interestingly, the genre and trope derive from the American TV show Bewitched (Nippon.com). Its evolution reflected Japan’s changing tone about female sexuality, focusing on girls. Magical Girl doesn’t seem to be intended to attract the male gaze in a sexual light - and in fact was generated as a form of female empowerment by by way of growing up (TVTropes), but it seems to happen anyways (TVTropes).

Magical girls, as a genre, originated in the 1960s - the archetypical Sailor Moon encompasses not only magical girls, but also the kawaii aesthetic. Kawaii, incidentally, followed after the magical girl trope, and plays upon women performing as girls in society.

As magical girls are intended for young girls, a demographic known as shōjo, it is considered a subgenre of the target audience. Please note that shōnen'ai (Fanlore) and yaoi (Fanlore) are also subgenres of shōjo.

For some context, the adult female target audience is known as josei, the young adult men is known as shōnen, and adult male audience is known as seinen. Many manga and anime are often misattributed to the wrong category, so it helps to know which is which, and why.

Kumiko Saito argues (through an unfortunately paywalled article that I’m more than willing to disseminate to those without JSTOR access) that magical girls reinforce gender stereotypes as well as fetishize young female bodies. She argues this point more eloquently than I can, so I’ll be quoting a few sections below.

Page 148 (7 of 23 on the PDF):

The 1960s “witch” housewife theme waned quickly in the United States, but various cultural symbolisms of magic smoothly translated into the Japanese climate, leading to Japans four-decade-long obsession with the magical girl. Bewitched incorporated the concept of magic as female power to be renounced after marriage, thereby providing “a discursive site in which feminism (as female power) and femininity has been negotiated” (Moseley 2002, 403) in the dawning of Americas feminist era. Japans magical girls represented a similar impasse of fitting into female domesticity, continued to fascinate Japanese society, and came to define the magical girl genre. In direct contrast to the American heroines Samantha and Jeannie, however, whose strife arose from the antagonism between magic (as power) and the traditional gender role as wife or fiancée, the magical girls dilemma usually lies between female adulthood and the juvenile female stage prior to marriage, called shõjo. In other words, the magical girl narratives often revolve around the magical freedom of adolescence prior to the gendered stage of marriage and motherhood, suggesting the difficulty of imagining elements of power and defiance beyond the point of marriage. In fact, these programs were broadcast exactly when the rate of love-based marriage started to surpass that of miai (arranged marriage),4 which implies that the magical girl anime, founded on the strict ideological division between shõjo and wife/mother, may have been an anxious reaction to the emergent phase of romance.

Page 150 (9 of 23 on the PDF):

The combination of magical empowerment and shõjo-ness framed by the doomed nature of transient girlhood naturally created ambivalent, messages in Akko-chan as well. In the societal milieu in which Japan was undergoing the politically turbulent era of Marxist student movements at the largest scale in the postwar era, Akko-chan’s super- human ability to transform into anyone (or anything) is quite revolutionary, implying a sense of women’s liberation. Despite this potential, her metamorphic ability never threatens gender models, as she typically dreams of becoming a princess, a bride, or a female teacher she respects. The use of magic is also largely limited to humanitarian community services in town. Akko-chan’s symbolic task throughout the series focuses on how to steer her power to serve her friends and family, leading to the final episode in which she relinquishes magic to save her father. Akko-chan embraces the cross-generic mismatch between the radical idea of empowering a girl with superhuman ability and the hahamono [mother genre] sentimentalism idealizing women’s self-sacrifice. All in all, the new setting adopted in this series, that a mediocre girl accidentally gains magic, became a useful mechanism for the underlying theme that the heroine is foredoomed to say farewell to magic in the end. This rhetorical device transforms latent power of the amorphous girl into the reappreciation of traditional gender norms by equating magic with shõjo-hood to be given up at a certain stage.

Saito discusses the thematic shifts in the magical girl subgenre in the 1980s to a more sexualized view, and the according rise of both an older audience and otaku fans, the latter of whom, she clarifies, make a habit of recontextualizing canon to categorize characters into stereotypes that are stripped of the majority of their original context.

On pages 153-154 (12-13 of 23 on the PDF):

The conventions of the magical girl genre transformed significantly against this paradigm shift. Both Minky Momo and Creamy Mami originally targeted children, recording a decent outcome in business and eventually leading to the revival of the genre. Because the plots are directly built on the genre clichés, however, the jokes and sarcasm of many episodes appear comprehensible only to adult viewers equipped with the knowledge of the Töei magical girls. The intrigue of these programs largely lies in the way they parody and mock the established genre conventions, especially the restrictive function of magic and the meaning of transformation. The genre is now founded on the expectation that the adult viewer has acquired a diachronic fan perspective to fetishize both the characters and the text’s meanings.

Creamy Mami presents the story of fourth-grader Yū, who gains magical power that enables her to turn into a sixteen-year-old girl. Yū’s magical power is more restrictive than Momo’s, for her superhuman capacity simply means metamorphosis into her adult form, who happens to become an idol singer called Mami. Given that the magic’s ability is self-oriented cosmetic effect and bodily maturation, the heroine’s ultimate goal by means of magic is to grow old enough to attract her male friend Toshio, who neglects Yū’s latent charm but falls in love with the idol Mami. The series concludes when Yū loses her magic, which correlates to Toshio’s realization that Yū is his real love. Mami’s thematic messages teach the idea that magic does not bring much advantage or power after all, or rather, magic serves as an obstacle for the appreciation of the truly magical period called shõjo. The heroine gains magic to prove, although retroactively, the importance of adolescence preceding the possession of “magic” that enables (and forces) female maturation.

It’s noted in the article that the 1990s-2000s period received criticism for showing a physical maturation of girls, so codified euphemisms via garment changes such as additional frills and curled hair were used instead. This “third-wave” magical girl challenged standing norms of its predecessors by doing things such as likening adult responsibilities (“childrearing and job training”) as a sort of game, as well as the transformation implying that the character’s power is in being herself, something that juxtaposes previous norms.

Due to shifting power dynamics and other changes in Japan’s culture, it became more common for boys to become magical girls as well, further separating the magical girl concept from a strict reflection of gender roles. As such, Japanese culture - insofar as my English-based research can guide me - no longer immediately implies a direct and distinct correlation between magical girls and the female gender.

An analysis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (PMMM) by Tate James (2017; PDF) discusses an additional dimension of the magical girl genre. Two pertinent points of the piece is that 1.) PMMM dismantles archetypes pitting women against girls, and 2.) PMMM reinforces the gender stereotype that the best type of girl is a passive girl.

Now for the issue you’ve raised about who ought to be the primary caregiver of children.

Consistent, immediate, and continuous interaction between a mother and her child benefits both of them (Citation 4, Scientific American 1, Live Science, Citation 5, Scientific American 2, UNICEF, WHO). Mothers have a distinct neurobiological makeup that predisposes them toward caring for infants (Citation 6), and likewise infants have a predisposed preference to their mother’s voice and heartbeat (Citation 7). I would like to think that is sufficient evidence as to why nearly all cultures encourage mothers as the primary caregivers.

This said, cultivation of a father-child dyad is immensely beneficial to the child (Citation 8, Citation 9), and can alleviate the effect of maternal depression on the child (ScienceDaily). Partnered men residing with children have lower levels of testosterone but a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and adiposity (Citation 10). It’s interesting to note that higher prolactin levels in the mother’s breastmilk has a correspondingly higher level of sociosexual activity with their partner in cotton-top tamarins, which stimulates pair bonding (Citation 11), as well as in other species (Citation 12).

Paternal postpartum depression is recently recognized in fathers, to severe and reverberating deleterious effects on themselves and their family (Citation 13). Screening tools for detecting depression in Swedish fathers is not sufficiently developed, and many men may be passed over despite reaching cut-off suggestions in other criteria for depression (Citation 14).

It has been observed that while human mother and fathers have the similar oxytocin pathways, the exhibit different parenting behaviours when exposed to elevated levels of oxytocin - primarily that fathers will react with high stimulatory behaviour and exploratory play (Wikipedia).

Men being socialized in a culture of stoicism and an encouraged reaction pattern to violence have poor mental health that can culminate into death and other long-term effects (Citation 15). Suicide in the US is currently the leading cause of death at time of posting this response, that the total suicide rate increased 31% from 2001-2017, and in 2017 male rates were nearly four times higher than females (NIMH).

On the topic of magical culture: it’s incredibly difficult to research because it’s a component of overall culture, and one that’s not typically available to strangers/foreigners/the uninitiated. As such, a lot of authors default to what they already know. It’s not a bad thing, but if someone wants to reach outside their comfort zone, they’re going to have some trouble.

I’m going to go off the three, four-ish, cultures you’ve already come to us with: American, Scandinavian, Scythian/Samartian, and Japanese just to round things out.

For a very, very rough overview of America, we have:

Native Americans of the contiguous US

Hawai’i

Alaska

Whatever the colonizing peoples brought over (including, but not limited to, English, Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, German, and Italian)

Whatever the myriad cultures of Africa brought over as slaves

Hispanic

NB: I’ve put Hawai’i and Alaska as separate items because they’re not part of the contiguous US.

European settlers were of a few groups:

The merchants working on charters

Indentured servants from the merchants’ homelands

Slavs

Immigrants in post-colonial eras

This is an important distinction because 1.) contemporary culture matters a lot politically, 2.) how people came to the US determined how they and their family were treated, and 3.) the contemporary job culture determined their social class.

(Slavs, as a note, are the origin of the English word “slave”, something that Western Europeans historically liked to propagate.)

I’m not going to go into the details of everything the US has to offer in terms of cultural diversity aside from a nudge in the direction of Santería. What you pick up to research is up to you.

Scandinavian folk magic is known as “trolldom” (Swedish-language Wikipedia), and the region was known for their cunningfolk. Please note that klok/-a, klog/-e, and related words relates to the English word cloak, and these people are so named because wearing one was an integral part of how they interacted with the supernatural.

The InternetArchive has a book (albeit in Swedish) about the history of magic in Sweden, which is available in multiple formats. If you’d prefer to have something in English, you can either buy this book, or inform your library you’d like to them to buy it for you.

I’m a little surprised you hadn’t mentioned either the völva (Swedish Wikipedia, English Wikipedia) or seiðr (Wikipedia), as they’re quite a well-known part of Scandinavian folk culture. Fjörn, as always, is my first stop for this area of research, with the post “Lesson 7 - Viking Spirituality”, the Víkingabók Database, the tag of Old Norse words, and the post “Norðurbók: A List of the Tales and Sagas of Icelanders” as incredibly good starting points. I encourage you to peruse them, especially because the words you learn will help you be more precise during research.

The Scythian culture is quite far reaching, as they had occupied most of the Eurasian Steppe during the Iron Age, and much of this area can be found in modern-day countries such as Russia, Iran, and China, among others. Because of how far their peoples spread out, the Scythians intermixed with their neighbors, and as such there are sub-groups to the culture.

The Sarmatians were more Russian, as that’s where a large amount of their territory laid, and were absorbed into early Slavic culture. Both their and the overall Scythian language group is eastern Iranian.

In order to help you orient yourself, here’s a map from Wikipedia:

Description: Historical spread of Iranian peoples/languages: Scythia, Sarmatia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire in about 170 BC (evidently before the Yuezhi invaded Bactria). Modern political boundaries are shown to facilitate orientation.

Japanese magical culture is intrinsically tied to their religion, and as such it would be beneficial to read about Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. The wiki for Japanese mythology is a thorough primer, though if you get stuck, then I’m sure @scriptmyth would be glad to help you on not only this culture, but others.

As for the jobs you’ve proposed - I’m going to jump right into scribes because the irony of that is it’s historically a male-dominated job, and is the progenitor of jobs such as “public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers”. It is, with even greater irony, European women that are noted in Wikipedia, and that medieval women are increasingly thought to have played an integral part in manuscript writing (New Scientist, Science Advances).

I’m not the best person to ask for medieval culture, unfortunately, so you’ll need someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject to direct you to the finer points.

The wiki for women in war links to a lot of lists, so I would suggest poking around for historical references by era (that will likely lead to by culture) to orient yourself on how women have participated in war in the past. There’s quite a bit of mythology to be found there, as well, so if you pick up some specific goddesses you get stuck on, then pop over to @scriptmyth.

Likewise, the wiki for women in government is an interesting read, as is women in positions of power. Since both are primarily modern-times oriented, I would suggest looking at the list of queens regnant for a more historical perspective. I would have difficulty giving you more than that, as you would need to pinpoint your reference cultures first.

As history often neglects women’s contributions to society if they weren’t a ruler or similarly powerful ruler - and, frankly, that frequently applied to men as well the further back you go - I’m going to toss a couple of starting points at you for the area of medicine:

Women in medicine § Ancient medicine - Wikipedia

Women in medicine - Science Museum: History of Medicine

One thing to keep in mind is that as goalposts changed for medicine - the standardization of knowledge and the need to attend a medical school to be legally allowed to perform medicine - the availability of women to participate went down.

Another is that medicine, historically, relied upon herbal medicine, and Wikipedia itself notes that there’s a heavy overlap with food history - something that’s traditionally a domain of women. This abstract by Marcia Ramos‐e‐Silva MD, PhD, talks about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, and the first page available tells you that medieval women were in charge of quite a lot despite not being allowed to participate in the male-dominated sphere of war. The Herbal Academy dips briefly into not only the saint, but other historical aspects of herbalism that might interest you.

The wiki of women in the Middle Ages, along with that of Hildegard of Bingen, nicely rounds out this particular topic.

I need to bring out the fact that Ancient Egypt was and is well-known for the equality and respect afforded to their women - in the interest of staying on subject, particularly in the field of medicine (Ancient History Encyclopedia). Isis was well-known as a goddess of healing (Wikipedia), an aspect she has in common with goddesses in many other cultures (Wikipedia). As an added side-note, Merit Ptah in her popularly-known context has been concluded to be an inflated misunderstanding - and misconstrued interpretation - of a historical figure with significant fabrication (LiveScience, Oxford).

The presence of women in medicine fluctuated in every culture, an in ancient times often shared some correlation with the use of magic (Citation 16). Healing, historically, has a high correlation with the supernatural - and if you care to look, women are usually responsible for the domain of the supernatural. (Or at least the feminine part, which was complementary and complemented by the masculine part.)

I’m going to hop back to politics real quick to bring up abbesses, particularly the social power they exercised as women heading religious orders. An article by Alixe Bovey for the British Library gives the TL;DR of medieval women and abbeys, though if you’d like something with a bit more detail, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Eileen Edna Power is also available.

Abbeys, with their rise and fall, are important to modern American culture. Midwives, to be even more particular, have the most direct impact. In Western Europe, a midwife may under certain circumstances perform baptisms. This was a debated topic of its time, as baptisms were rituals of the Church, and the Church had strict regulations allowing only men to perform their rituals.

During the 1500s - and up to the 1800s, in some cases - midwives were defamed to be witches. You’ll notice that this corresponds to a standardization of medical knowledge, with its corresponding legal restrictions on who may practice medicine. For the Church, the politics playing behind the scenes of midwifery and female physicians fluctuated with their observations about women’s power relative to their own (Citation 16).

Malta is an excellent case study of this phenomenon (Citation 17), and encapsulates the movement of witchcraft accusations that took place throughout this period - something historians noted as corresponding to the rise of Protestantism (ThoughtCo). There’s some debate that the increasing orientation to wages in contemporary economy facilitated this adverse behaviour against women, as well as various other social pressures as politically mitigated by the Catholic Church (Wikipedia).

As the practice of medicine was segregated according to sex - male patients to male physicians, female patients to female physicians - there were proportionally fewer men in trades such as midwifery than women despite the medieval shift toward male encroachment of territory (Wikipedia). This corresponding money- and thus male-oriented intrusion into the female sphere of medicine can be seen with the invention of the obstetric forceps (JSTOR). The rising culture of appropriation constituted the witchcraft trials that, incidentally, influenced American culture during their colonization years.

A pertinent name to remember for American history of the witchcraft trials is Margaret Jones, a Puritan midwife and the first person to be accused of witchcraft in the trails taking place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Wikipedia).

The Salem Witch Trials, as an offhand note, could well be an anomaly due to ergotism (Citation 18).

One thing I’m willing to bend on - a little bit - is manual labor, but mostly because you’re describing something very similar to what’s already been invented: corvée labor. There’s plenty of other forms depending on what culture you’re going for, though unlike what you’re proposing, does not necessarily imply the direct and permanent subjugation of people.

I will absolutely quibble with the idea of “uneducated” labor equating to “less valuable” labor - universities offer non-vocational degrees, typically in the areas of research and/or religion, and guilds were created as a means of quality control (that unfortunately got out of hand and committed crimes such as rent-seeking). Women in guilds were a thing, vulnerable to the same fluctuations as their other occupations outside the house.

If we are defining “uneducated” labour as “menial” labour, then this set of occupations inherently varies by culture, as does its relative weight of importance. One example of this would be writing; it may be menial but important, whereas holding negotiations could be a “major” role but wouldn’t exist without the support of workers “less than” them.

Correspondingly, gender divisions may not necessarily mean an assignation of “lesser” or “greater” when compared against each other. In medieval Europe, at least, the creation of textiles was split along the general lines of spinning and weaving. Women held the former (hence “spinster”), and men held the latter. Spinning was often not formalized into guilds then, but it was an important cornerstone of the economy that could support entire families. A guest post on The Freelance History Writer’s blog seems to indicate that this gender division was due to influence by the Bible, which seems to corroborate with the history of both professions as detailed on Wikipedia - the further back we go, and also the less connected to Christianity, the more textile work women presided over. This granted them greater control over their presence in society, since the selling of textiles was useful leverage to support themselves and others.

A similar discrepancy can be found with agriculture. Hamer women in Ethiopia are traditionally the one to cultivate sorghum, a cornerstone crop to their diet, and they exhibit preferences in which varieties they grow according to criteria such as which is easiest to grind and long-term storage feasibility (Citation 19). Accordingly, there’s been an increasing orientation around the growing of crops rather than the pastoralist habits of their men, with trading standards occuring at one goat for one Dore (“pile of maize or sorghum”) (Citation 19).

A study examining the male sphere of hunting within a society discusses the various cultural implications of defendable vs non-defendable meat sharing, with respect to how the meat is distributed and its corresponding social range (e.g. immediate social circle vs entire community), something I find interesting given that the kilocalories obtained from meat is roughly equal to that of the female sphere-acquired agriculture/gathering (Citation 20). The division of labour along gender lines when it comes to food flow in a community seems, historically, to be both comparable and compatible to each other - a recurring theme with many of the topics I’ve already covered.

Gender roles in their historical perspective - especially the further back you go - are often complimentary to each other, and are an economical way to divide up the burden of maintaining a society to a functional level. There are plenty of exceptions to this (see: third genders), as well, and many cultures exhibit the idea that a productive person is good for society; their roles may look a little different from the person next to them, and not only is the work considered equal in terms of importance, but also with a bit of poking around, you’ll find that few cultures have harsh punishments for anyone “stepping outside” their predicted roles.

Men are already objectified plenty. That their treatment by society looks different than women’s, or other genders, is by no means an excuse to sweep things under the room and pretend that they have it best - or worse, purposefully ostracize them in a fictional work to further mock, ridicule, and isolate them. This contributes to the societal issues in your culture that you wish to address, and stems from a uniquely pervasive perspective from modern American culture that differs from many other cultures in the world.

TL;DR - The way you wish to objectify men is already being done, especially in American culture. It is harmful, and will have an impact that will reach further than you might anticipate. This approach is counterproductive to your goals, and the cultures/media you cite either directly contradict your beliefs of said sources or otherwise undermine your beliefs. It is vastly more productive to take a deeper look at the origins of the issues you wish to address in your writing, as well as the reference material that you wish to use. Learning perspectives outside your native culture will benefit you immensely, and the results could surprise you.

Citations

Citation 1 - PDF - Doepke, M., Tertilt, M., Voena, A.. (2012). “The Economics and Politics of Women’s Rights,” Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 339-372, 07.

Citation 2 - PDF - Fernández, R.. (2014). “Women’s rights and development,” Journal of Economic Growth, vol 19(1), pages 37-80.

Citation 3 - PDF - Duflo, E. (2012). “Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: 1051-79.

Citation 4 - PDF - Crenshaw J. T. (2014). “Healthy Birth Practice #6: Keep Mother and Baby Together- It’s Best for Mother, Baby, and Breastfeeding.” The Journal of perinatal education, 23(4), 211–217. doi:10.1891/1058-1243.23.4.211

Citation 5 - Faisal-Cury, A., Bertazzi Levy, R., Kontos, A., Tabb, K., & Matijasevich, A. (2019). “Postpartum bonding at the beginning of the second year of child’s life: the role of postpartum depression and early bonding impairment.” Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 1-7.

Citation 6 - PDF - Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., Swain, J. E., Suwalsky, J. T., … & De Pisapia, N. (2017). “Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(45), E9465-E9473.

Citation 7 - PDF - Webb, A. R., Heller, H. T., Benson, C. B., & Lahav, A. (2015). “Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(10), 3152-3157.

Citation 8 - PDF - Pan, Y., Zhang, D., Liu, Y., Ran, G., & Teng, Z. (2016). “Different effects of paternal and maternal attachment on psychological health among Chinese secondary school students.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(10), 2998-3008.

Citation 9 - PDF - Brown, G. L., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & Neff, C. (2012). “Father involvement, paternal sensitivity, and father-child attachment security in the first 3 years.” Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 26(3), 421–430. doi:10.1037/a0027836

Citation 10 - PDF - Lee T Gettler, Mallika S Sarma, Rieti G Gengo, Rahul C Oka, James J McKenna, Adiposity, CVD risk factors and testosterone: Variation by partnering status and residence with children in US men, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2017, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 67–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox005

Citation 11 - PDF - Snowdon, C. T., & Ziegler, T. E. (2015). “Variation in prolactin is related to variation in sexual behavior and contact affiliation.” PloS one, 10(3), e0120650.

Citation 12 - Hashemian, F., Shafigh, F., & Roohi, E. (2016). “Regulatory role of prolactin in paternal behavior in male parents: A narrative review.” Journal of postgraduate medicine, 62(3), 182–187. doi:10.4103/0022-3859.186389

Citation 13 - PDF - Eddy, B., Poll, V., Whiting, J., & Clevesy, M. (2019). “Forgotten Fathers: Postpartum Depression in Men.” Journal of Family Issues, 40(8), 1001-1017.

Citation 14 - PDF - Psouni, E., Agebjörn, J., & Linder, H. (2017). “Symptoms of depression in Swedish fathers in the postnatal period and development of a screening tool.” Scandinavian journal of psychology, 58(6), 485-496.

Citation 15 - Pappas, S. (2018, January). “APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.” Monitor on Psychology, 50(1).

Citation 16 - PDF - Kontoyannis, M., & Katsetos, C. (2011). “Midwives in early modern Europe (1400-1800).” Health Science Journal, 5(1), 31.

Citation 17 - PDF - Savona-Ventura, C. (1995). “The influence of the Roman Catholic Church on midwifery practice in Malta.” Medical history, 39(1), 18-34.

Citation 18 - PDF - Woolf, Alan. (2000). “Witchcraft or Mycotoxin? The Salem Witch Trials. Journal of toxicology.” Clinical toxicology. 38. 457-60. 10.1081/CLT-100100958.

Citation 19 - PDF - Samuel, T. (2013). “From cattle herding to sedentary agriculture: the role of hamer women in the transition.” African Study Monographs, Suppl. 46: 121–133. [Alternate PDF link]

Citation 20 - PDF - Gurven, Michael & Hill, Kim. (2009). “Why Do Men Hunt?.” Current Anthropology. 50. 51-74. 10.1086/595620.

Further Reading

Harry S Truman § Domestic Affairs - Wikipedia

Marshall Plan - Wikipedia

Interstate Highway System - Wikipedia

Medieval Icelandic Law (The Grágás) – Women’s Rights: On Reclaiming Property during Separation. By @fjorn-the-skald

Fjörn’s Library

“Notes on Valkyries and the like?” by @fjorn-the-skald

Fjörn’s chronological tag on women

Epigenetic correlates of neonatal contact in humans - Development and Psychopathology

Feral: So, obviously, everything Tex just said- round of effing applause!

I do want to hone in on one specific part of your ask, “since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them” and direct you to this blog post on Mythcreants specifically addressing the Persecution Flip Story and why it’s not a great idea from a social justice perspective.

Happy reading!

#pylons #matriarchal society #gender dynamics #deseretgear

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void-knights · 4 years

Text

The Coffee Shop and Students

Square Filled: Coffee Shop AU Pairing: Loki / Sigyn, Tags: coffee shop AU, Modern AU, Music Student Loki, Art Student Sigyn, Odin's A+ Parenting, Bisexual Loki, Bisexual Sigyn, Customers being terrible, Casual misogyny Summary: Since Odin cut him off Loki (a music student) needed a job while attending Uni, this is how he becomes an exhausted Barista and how he meets Sigyn a sunny art student. Word Count: 7630 Written/Created for @lokibingo

AO3 Link

Loki had never understood Odin, Odin had been boasting to all his friends and associates that Loki had got into the best university. Loki was going to be standing amongst the elites of their country, it would open so many opportunities for him, especially amongst the government. It delighted Odin to no end.

“I’m studying music,” had been the words that made Odin give up on that one instance of pride and instead he went back to praising Thor who was heading off to get himself killed in the military, just like Odin wanted. As if that had gone so well for the PTSD riddled Hela who now worked in a wolf sanctuary up north somewhere.

Sometimes Loki thought Hela had the right idea. Give up and go to live in the wilds with a pack of wolves and a bunch of people who just understood you instead of trying to please everyone.

Still, Loki attended university, he had won this chance and was not about to give up on his dreams. But Odin made an ultimatum, while he would pay for Loki’s education no matter what (no child of his would be in debt) he was not supporting Loki any further if he continued to study music instead of politics.

Loki took the money for his courses and didn’t look back, until he blew through his savings at the age of nineteen and found himself in need of a job. How hard could it being a Batista be?

He was now twenty-one and understood just how fucking difficult it was. The job in of itself was easy, once he memorized the prices, the way to make the teas, coffees and hot sandwiches he was set. What was difficult was the dammed customers. Some he liked, some he dreaded, some he hated and some he forgot because they were either unremarkable or never ever returned.

His previous coffee shop had been two hours away from his dorms, this new one was twenty minutes on foot and ten on a bike. He preferred the manager, a stout cheerful red haired man who was understanding and didn’t make rude remarks about anyone who deviated from the norm. His previous manager had been a nightmare to work with, he was never happy.

The routine was fairly similar, the manager let the students do their work so long as it didn’t interfere with their jobs and the running of this place. For students like Loki there was not much practical work he could be doing, unlike Steve and his constant drawing, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make a dent in his research.

(Steve Rogers also happened to be one of his roommates which is how he found this job in the first place, the other two being Anthony Stark – slumming it with other students much to the delight of Odin who wanted Loki to be the billionaire’s best friend – and Natasha Romanov, she spoke Russian when angry or exhausted and somehow knew everyone. Loki was fairly certain she was either in a dance, theatre or art course.)

One bitterly cold autumnal day she arrived, the woman with the golden-red curly hair and tan freckled skin. He’d never seen freckles on lips before, he thought it just lipstick until he realized the exhausted woman wasn’t wearing any make up. Understandable given it was currently six in the morning on a Friday.

She was exhausted but lovely, it was as though someone had given both autumn and summer physical form and blessed her with a cute smile and odd taste in jumpers.

Steve looked up from his sketchbook, “Siggy, you’re back?”

“No I’m haunting you, whooooo,” she said waving her hands about, Loki stared, her mittens (that turned into gloves when folded back) were snake mouths. It was like having a pair of Kermit the frog heads for hands but yellow with red eyes.

“You promised to haunt Nat first,” Steve said pushing himself away from the counter half amused.

“Nobody living or dead has the balls for that,” ‘Siggy’ half shouted watching the blonde vanish into the back office. Loki heard Steve laugh, he had to agree with the pair of them, there was nobody could handle that. At least being dead was an advantage.

Steve returned slapping a pair of keys into the woman’s hand, “Now you have to buy something,” he said pointing to the menu, “Two items please.”

“It’s blackmail then?” the woman laughed, “Give me my usual.”

“No, that will kill you this early in the morning, try green tea instead, it’s good for you,”

“Such a mother hen, I know what I’m about and I want an eight shot espresso,”

“One large Coffee pitch black and a sandwich,” Steve countered.

“Deal,” the woman sighed dramatically folding back her mittens and digging out change from her jeans pocket. She got her order and left, her umbrella was also yellow, a bright yellow stood out in the grey gloom of the rainy morning.

“Who was that?” Loki asked Steve.

“Oh that, that’s Sigyn,” Steve answered sounding bored as though she was not the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes on. Steve was boring, Steve needed better eyes or glasses or everything, how could he not see what an attractive delightful woman Sigyn was? “We’re looking at houses together, so she’s borrowing my car.”

Loki’s mind skidded to a halt, what? They were only twenty-one, Steve didn’t come from money, he got into this very exclusive university through his exceptional talents, grants and only one loan. Which meant Sigyn-

“-Oh,” Steve looked up from his sketchbook, “You should join us,” it was half six in the morning nobody could blame Loki’s brain for conjuring images of sharing a bed with Steve and Sigyn, both were gorgeous.

Sense came back to him, Steve was dating Bucky, so why was Steve looking at houses with Sigyn?

“So we don’t have to spend the next couple of years in uni dorms, Sigyn is going for her masters and doctorate like me,” Steve answered Loki’s unasked question, he was rather good at that, Loki blinked, “It’s cheaper than the university dorms, so you’ll be saving money.”

“Who else have you asked?” Loki asked interested in the idea, anything to save money would help and the university dorms weren’t the best place to keep on living. They had rats inspecting the property.

“Natasha, Sam, Bucky and Tony, Tony asked Rhodey and I’m asking you, that should make up the numbers,” Steve said.

“Eight people?” Loki frowned.

“Bucky and I will be sharing a room, I think Rhodey’s happy to share with Tony and if they need to Sigyn will share with Natasha,” Steve said.

Loki considered it carefully, while more expensive Loki had his roommates had signed up for short term leases, by the semester in case they ever wanted to move out for any reasons. They had quickly learned by the first year that the dorms were not ideal but living on their own was impossible, this seemed an ideal solution.

“Well we have until the end of the first semester, let me know a week before I have other people interested,” Steve said and Loki nodded, thinking it over and not just because of the potential of getting to know Sigyn more.

A customer walked in, she carried a snotty toddler on her hip, a second kid walked alongside her and an exhausted teenager followed her decked out in every single awful thing Loki used to wear as an aspiring goth with delusions of what constituted good taste. It was nice to know some things never changed.

Loki played rock paper scissors with Steve, he won, until the snotty three-year-old was let loose and put his snotty hands all over the glass display unit. Steve smugly grinned at him as Loki went to retrieve the cleaning supplies, it didn’t help that the kid was now coughing and sneezing over everything.

“Ma’am please can you keep your child by your side,” Steve said, Steve was bright-eyed and bushy tailed even after years in retail, how? How was that possible, Loki’s charity towards customers had been chipped away within a month.

Of course the woman ignored him and let her kid do what they want, Loki couldn’t help it if the toddler tripped over his foot and crashed into its other sibling. He couldn’t help it if the mother carried the pair off embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as the teenager who paid for their order and carried it out for their mother.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that,” Steve said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Loki grinned pleased with himself.

*****

Loki decided he hated customers when one cold evening one customer loudly decided to shout at Loki for having his long hair pulled into a ponytail and did he dare wear nail polish how dare he!

Steve of course stood up for Loki, because that was who Steve was, he wasn’t like his family who would happily laugh alongside the customer about how stupid Loki looked. Steve pointed out that this was a free country and that Loki tied his hair back for hygiene reasons, anyone with long hair had to do that regardless of gender.

Because Steve believed in things like freedom of speech, expression and so didn’t give a shit about your gender or sex. The woman shamed by Steve and his righteous speech took her coffee and slunk out of the coffee shop her tail between her legs.

“My hero,” Loki drawled causing Steve’s cheeks to pink, “So confident, I can feel the righteous surging!” Steve shook his head, “Hey want a rousing discussion about truth? Honour, patriotism, god bless-”

“I get it, you love me, lets move on,” Steve sighed completely resigned to Loki’s way of thanking him.

“Aww,” Both Steve and Loki turned to see Sigyn standing there, “Personally I’ve been on the end of Steve’s speeches, great as they are they tend to amp you up, you could lead an army with Steve’s speeches.”

“Take your heart attack juice and leave,” Steve said already filling a cup with eight espressos.

“That’s no way to speak to a customer!” Loki faked shock.

“Yes, how dare you!” Sigyn grinned, this is why Steve didn’t want Sigyn and Loki meeting, it would either be amazing or terrible, “I have rights as a customer!”

“I would demand compensation, a cheese and bacon toastie for instance,” Loki smirked at Sigyn.

“I – I wait what… excuse… what, Steeeeeeve, you did-”

“-No you, Sig are not allowed any more cheese at night,” Mother Hen Steve warned her, “Cheese gives you weird nightmares remember.”

“But it tastes so good! And that’s where the best ideas come from,” Sigyn said.

“It’s her right as a free patriot to eat cheese whenever she wants,” Loki said, yep Steve regretted them meeting. He decided it was worse than introducing Tony to Bruce and Jane Foster, the science trio were mad bastards doing crazy shit.

“Yes,” Sigyn nodded, “It is my democratic right to eat cheese and have weird nightmares. Now gimmie.”

“Even the nightmare about the tap dancing pig?” Steve asked, how he did that with a straight face baffled Loki, but he did.

“There were sooo many nipples,” Sigyn whispered haunted by some weird idea that did not seem that horrific until Loki noticed her frightened expression. “I change my mind,” She relented as Steve slid her order to her, “What time does your shift end?”

“Ten thirty why?” Steve asked checking the clock, an hour to go.

“I need your friend, the crazy bloke that talks to things?” that could only be one person.

“Tony,” Steve said

“Yeah, him, I need him to look at my laptop, it’s being a right old bastard, I think he might me on his last legs,” Sigyn sighed dramatically.

“Well you can wait here and walk back with us if you want,” Steve offered, Sigyn nodded and smiled thanking Steve as she claimed a peaceful corner all to herself.

The majority of the shift was spent dealing with people who were just starting out on their night out. Their manager closed up the shop after everything was done and kicked them out was he was sure everything was done for a second time.

The walk back to their dorms was a short walk filled with brief conversation and many yawns.

As soon as they were inside their dorm they were greeted by Tony and Natasha debating which was the best way to enjoy popcorn. Steve being the gentleman he was offered to take Sigyn’s black military coat, it hung alongside the other coats, her mittens stashed away in the pockets.

“Bacon popcorn is my go to,” Sigyn admitted pulling her bag to the side to take out her laptop.

“A woman after my heart,” Tony grinned at her.

“Good, fix my laptop genius,” Sigyn said handing it to him, “I got stuff I need protecting.”

“Like your porn stash?” Tony snickered.

“No, who keeps porn on their laptop in this day and age, get a pornhub account,” Sigyn said without any shame, Steve rolled his eyes while Tony laughed, “Fix him, he’s got my research and digital works, he’s not giving them up.”

“Greedy bastard,” Tony laughed with her.

Loki didn’t have much opportunity to spend time with Sigyn beyond handing her a bottle of water, she was too busy hovering over Tony and her laptop like a mamma duck waiting for her duckling to return. Of course the old as fuck (it didn’t take a genius to see how old her laptop was) laptop was on it’s last legs.

But Tony being Tony backed everything up on a portable SSD drive for Sigyn and told her not to worry about the cost of the thing, he recommended Laptops within her budget but said she couldn’t really expect to do much artwork beyond them, especially 3D stuff.

Sigyn thanked him and went along her way, Tony being Tony bought Sigyn a laptop. Steve said that she had beat him half to death trying to get him to send it back, Tony stuck an unreasonable amount of stickers on the laptop so no. He couldn't send it back.

Apparently Sigyn was pleased but annoyed that he had been so nice, whatever she got him in return made the young man giggle and blush. They never told anyone what it was.

*****

Sigyn returned to the coffee shop one warmer autumnal afternoon wearing a faded white band shirt with holes around the V-neck, jeans worn and weathered with time and patched with embroidery with paint stained army boots and bracelets around her wrists. Her curly hair was braided, half cornrows on her left side and half box braids on the right with beads and charms hanging from the braids.

Today Steve had the day off leaving Loki to suffer with Jane, well no that was a lie. He liked Jane, he didn’t like her dating his brother (who was four years older than her) and neither of them had the warmth and cheer that Steve had, that cheer and warmth kept them going. Instead, Jane and Loki wallowed in their misery as customers made their lives hell.

One in particular seemed to think slapping Jane’s arse was a good idea, he of course was equally horrified when he slapped Loki’s arse only to find out Loki was a dude.

“Usual?” Loki asked a little amused when she seemed surprised he would remember.

“Actually no, it’s pumpkin spice season,” Sigyn patted out a beat, “Give me a large pumpkin spice latte.”

“You can pay for it like anyone else,” Loki grinned, it took a few seconds to realize what Loki meant before she laughed a little ducking her head. Several beads clicked against one another.

It was thanks to the lack of customers at this hour (either Sigyn was a pro at avoiding customers – which if the case, she needed to teach him that skill – or she worked weird hours. Being an art student he couldn’t decide which was the right choice,) that he was able to continue talking to her.

Sigyn sipped her latte pleased with the taste, there was a reason it was so dammed popular and it wasn’t because it was famous – or infamous. She savoured the spices as studied Loki closely.

He wasn’t what she had expected when Steve first talked about him, she was expecting some posh guy who wore jumpers and talked on a diamond encrusted I-Phone. Loki was quite… normal, well terms of fashion, in terms of looks he was pleasing on the eye.

“So Steve tells me you’re a music student?” She asked thinking given his background he would be some sort of classical music star someday. She had no idea what went into music, she liked what she liked and that was that.

“I am,” was all Loki added much to her frustration, until he laughed and added, “I have always had the talent, since I first played the piano.”

“Ah, so you are a classical musician?” she asked, he looked more like he belonged in a Scandinavian heavy metal or folk band, she couldn’t get a good grasp on him.

“Not classical no,” He smirked, and she was left annoyed once again, the tease. She had to leave due to her classes starting soon, that and a new line of customers arrived, she bid Loki a fond goodbye and walked away.

Jane stared at Loki, “You like Sigyn huh?”

“What’s not to like about her?” Loki asked.

“She does have a nice arse,” Jane agreed, that wasn’t her only ‘nice’ feature but Loki didn’t say it out loud and instead set to work getting the next round of orders in.

*****

It was one of those weeks, Loki was battling with a mental block, papers were due, he had run out of shampoo and resorted to Natasha’s so now he had to deal with frizzy hair and worst of all the customers.

The company had decided in their eternal wisdom to release a complicated new creation to beat their competition, this bastard of a concoction was named the ‘Halloween Unicorn’ it was a nightmarish creation of a kid that had been fed too much sugar.

Yet apparently the customers all loved it, it was an over glorified pumpkin spice latte with extras that came with its own Halloween themed cup. But it was popular, so popular that they had sold out on day two after Instagram stars starting peddling it.

Now everyone needed a picture with one, most frustrating were the people who tossed their drinks after getting the pictures. Having to empty rubbish bins that were half filled with coffee was no pleasant task. Thankfully they had heavy-duty bags that did not leak (after years of experimentation) the downside, they were heavy.

God forbid they run out of the special cups or the unicorn horns and unicorn shaped biscuit and sprinkles that the dammed drinks came with. What was wrong with a basic pumpkin latte?

Sigyn was the next customer not that Loki noticed in his exhausted state, not until she smiled at him, customers did not usually smile at him.

“Pumpkin Latte please,” she requested and Loki almost wept with joy, no overly fancy orders, just a simple god fearing pumpkin spice latte. She dropped her usual tip in the tip jar and took her order with no fuss or additional stress.

She was seated by the window perched on her bar stool making use of the Wi-Fi as she typed away on her brand-new laptop. It was a garish yellow colour that somehow suited Sigyn completely. He took the next order, things were looking up, this woman asked for a completely normal black coffee.

Then the new wave of unicorn lattes started pouring in, rush hour meant all hands on deck. Steve and Jane were manning the coffee orders, their manager took care of the food and Loki was left to deal with the customers, he rang up the orders and passed them on. He barely noticed Sigyn leaving, he couldn’t call out to her which annoyed him.

It was five in the evening when things started to die down, the students had been dealt with and the customers were thinning.

“Back again?” Steve asked sounding amused by something.

There stood Sigyn, her curly hair pulled back and held by a piece of cloth, her left cheek smeared with a blackish paint. She wore blue painters overalls with yellow wellington boots.

“Only because I get a freebie,” she said presenting the stamp card.

“Pumpkin spice?” Steve didn’t need to ask, he was already making the drink.

“Yes, feed me,” Sigyn whispered.

“Have you spent your weekly budget already?” Steve asked.

“It’s Saturday be in awe that I lasted this long,” She said as Steve went to check with their manager that it was fine giving his friend free food.

Their manager being nice and Steve being the best worker he had meant that Sigyn got her food. “So how’s your project going?” Steve asked delivering the food to Sigyn’s stable by the window.

As Sigyn took her first bite of the bacon and egg grilled sandwich the moan she uttered did things to Loki, things that he should not be experiencing in a coffee shop, “Ah uh,” Sigyn wiped the bit of egg off her bottom lip, Loki struggled to tear his eyes away from her, “Well, I completed it.”

Steve looked up annoyed, “You… of course you did,” He sighed resigned to his fate it seemed.

He couldn’t listen in on the rest of the conversation because a customer came up to the counter, the woman had an expression that screamed she could either be a sane and nice customer or about to make their lives hell for the next ten minutes.

She chose hell.

“It’s not very professional to have your hair like that ,” she said to Loki, his hair was in a ponytail for sanitary, health and safety reasons, not for fashion purposes.

He was used to it, “May I take your order, please?” he asked she would need to do better than that to get through the thick skin retail and service work had endowed him with.

“You shouldn’t have your nails painted,” she said, he was wearing gloves again for sanitary and health reasons, they all did.

Loki simply met her stare which made her uncomfortable, “Ma’am may I take your order please, there are other customers waiting,” he pointed out to her politely.

The woman huffed and puffed, was she somehow expecting to magically summon the manager from his office? Loki waited, the customers were telling her to hurry up and that just would not do. She broke down completely, shouting at Loki.

It was oddly nostalgic. Like Yuletide with the family. Until her words struck a particularly raw nerve, the string of homophobic slurs she spewed left the few people that did not have their phones pulling out their phones to film what was happening.

That summoned the manager, who being ex-army took no shit. The woman left without her unicorn latte (thank fuck for small mercies) and a polite banning by the manager.

Loki tried not to let such things affect him, after all she was just a nameless woman, one of many that passed through this store. But that did not mean her words did not sting. Steve took over the counter allowing Loki to make the coffee’s in peace, the woman’s tirade made people overly generous with their tips, which was nice at least.

Sigyn was sat at her usual spot, when he looked up he caught her eye she offered him a smile before returning to her work. It was an hour later when they had no customers that Loki went to sit with her, to learn what she was working on.

She had pulled off the top half off her overalls, wrapping the sleeves around her waist to prevent the rest falling down as she worked on her essay. For an art student she was muscular and very freckled, there didn’t seem to be an inch free of freckles.

“I’ve got to write an essay on Edmund Dulac,” She said he had no idea who that was, so she turned her screen to him, he nodded still having no clue who he was. “Are you okay?” she asked him which for a few moments baffled him completely.

He realized she was talking about the incident with the woman, “Yes, it is something you have to get used to,” he said she looked annoyed on his behalf.

Fiddling with a leather bracelet Sigyn smiled at him, “It’s not the most ideal time but I can’t keep faffing about with this, do you uh, well not coffee how about uh drinks sometime, with me?” she asked him.

It took him a moment to get over how adorable she was when she was flustered, that blush warming her warm brown skin beautifully. “You are asking me out?”

“Y-yep,” She nodded, “I mean, if you want to?” she was fascinated to know what he looked like outside the coffee shop.

“Okay,” he nodded.

“Wait really?” She asked surprised why? She was gorgeous, she was the beauty that most people on social aspired to be. “Oh, alright, um, my phone number,” she said.

He slid his phone in her direction, so she could type it in, “Why are you so surprised?” Loki asked her really wanting to know.

“Oh you know, because your hot and I thought you might already be dating someone and well It’s uh been a while since I’ve dated anyone,” She admitted handing him his phone back.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in an actual relationship with anyone, he had taken to one-night stands, mostly to experiment with his sexuality and try to pin it down. Sigyn smiled at him, and he believed her at that moment, she really was attracted to him for some reason.

Wasn’t that interesting?

*****

It was near the end of autumn by the time Sigyn and Loki could find the time to just spend a day together, what with their conflicting schedules, work and deadlines. But in the meantime they texted, messaged, phoned one another even taking a few moments to talk and get to know each other in the coffee shop.

It wasn’t as though they were strangers when they finally met up then, but they didn’t really know each other that well either. It helped calm him down as he stood waiting for her in the meeting spot.

Perhaps it had not been the greatest idea to come dressed in his usual blacks, with dashes of green and gold here and here. Some older folks were certainly disapproving of the way he dressed making him double guess his choices.

There was a part of him that wondered if Bruce was right, and he should have toned down his wardrobe for first impressions outside the coffee shop. The longer he waited (he cursed himself for needing to be early) the further he spiralled into panic and misery until finally a soft “Hey!” made him look up from his phone.

Sigyn stood there smiling wearing a knee-length mustard yellow jumper dress, thick black tights and black thigh high boots. Her knitted green and yellow scarf was ridiculously long with her usual brown backpack hung over one shoulder. Her hair had been freed from any restraints and now it was determined to be noticed the golden-red curls and coils framing her face seemed almost dazzling.

“Hello,” he greeted standing up, this was a little strange. Did they need to be in a coffee shop to feel normal? She laughed softly to herself, “What’s so funny?” for a dreadful second he imagined her laughing at him or something he chose to wear.

“Sorry, I was just thinking it’s a little weird seeing you in people cloths,” she smiled at him.

“I wear people cloths when I’m working,” He said.

“Your uniform is not people cloths, it’s the opposite, devoid of personality, this , feels like you,” she said grinning at him. She always seemed to be smiling or grinning. “How does this even work?” she asked him running her finger along the diagonal line of the zip on his leather jacket.

“Well you take the zip,” he began showing her the zip beneath his own black and green scarf and grinning when she rolled her eyes amused.

“Smart arse,” She said slapping him playfully on the arm. He did his best not to flinch, she noticed and thankfully said nothing, years of putting up with Thor and his friends had left their mark on him. She still smiled, pretending for his sake, or comfort that she had not noticed, something he appreciated. “So what now?”

“Has it that long for you?” He teased her she blushed an overly pleasant shade of pink as she walked alongside him.

“If I say yes would you be put off?” she asked him, hoping that he would not, some people were odd about people not dating, like it was a part of the curriculum for students.

“Of course not, I am more surprised you actually showed up,” he confessed though with a teasing tone as to not appear genuine. He did not wish to come across as needy or desperate.

“I wanted to see what you looked like in leather and skin tight jeans,” she waggled her eyebrows at him, like two charming caterpillars they danced, she was weirdly good at manipulating her eyebrows he thought transfixed for enough time to make Sigyn laugh.

“And?” he asked, he should have toned it down! It was ridiculous to think someone as warm, soft and pleasant as Sigyn would like this. Stark’s offer of a shirt suddenly seemed appealing.

“I approve,” She grinned at him, his whole body sagged in relief, she must have felt it because somehow that sunny smile seemed to grow a lot brighter. “So… what do people do on dates these days?”

He didn’t know, again dating had not been something he’d been overly interested in up until meeting Sigyn. Sigyn grinned at him, she knew he didn’t know either!

“People usually go for coffee,” He said lamely.

“ You want to go for coffee?” She asked him sounding amused, “That’s like asking me to spend my free time in a garage.”

“You work I a garage?” Loki asked suddenly he remembered something Tony had said about having Sigyn look at his car, he assumed he meant in the ‘I want to ask someone out’ way and not the actual practical way.

“Yep,” she said leading him through the streets with an idea, “My dad was the type that made his kids learn all the skills they would need in later life. He didn’t want me being ripped off if I ever managed to buy a car.”

Funny all his father gave him was self-esteem issues and anxiety, this was not something you said on a date, Loki knew that at least instead he said “My father just tossed money at people to solve whatever little problems he had.”

“Ah, you see that’s no good, I don’t care how rich you are everyone should know basic home maintenance,” Sigyn said, which sounded like good sound practical advice, the sort of ‘advice’ that Odin would shout at his children when telling them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

Instead, he answered, “Well my mother did teach me how to maintain a healthy garden, I know how to keep a vegetable patch and herb garden,” he said thinking it silly.

Sigyn turned to him awed like he had just said the greatest thing anyone could think of, “Really!? I’m useless with plants, well aside from Frank and Hudson.”

“Frank and Hudson?”

“Frank’s this spider-plant that just refuses to die, seriously I forgot to water him, and he just keeps on living and Hudson’s this Jade plant, I got him when he was a wee sprout as a kid, the bastard won’t die,”

“You make it sound like they are making your life an inconvenience!” he laughed.

“They grow Loki, they grow!”

“That’s what a plant is supposed to do,”

“Yes, but do you know how big twenty-year-old jade plants can be and how many babies a spider plant produces, lots!” She flapped her hand about.

He couldn’t help but laugh at the mental image of Sigyn on her one woman crusade to defeat two rather average houseplants that refused to die. She puffed out her cheeks pretending to be annoyed as he laughed, in truth she was delighted to see him so relaxed. This was nice.

Sigyn had taken him to the natural history museum, some place he had yet to visit despite living in the city for two years already. It was fascinating and much better than visiting a coffee shop. Even if suddenly he was craving a cup of coffee, his work had cursed or conditioned him!

The date went well, he did think it odd that they had not kissed on the first date, was that normal? He wasn’t sure but there was plenty of hand holding and laughter. Natasha said that was a good sign when he mentioned the date to her later that evening.

“The issue you got right now,” Natasha said stretching with Loki, they both attended evening dance classes together, pole dancing to be exact. It was a great way to keep in shape, “Is whether she’s aware of your sexuality?”

He had neglected to mention that, usually wasn’t something he needed to mention, “It might have slipped my memory,” Loki admitted mirroring Natasha as they went into the next stretch.

“Hmm, well you should get on that,” he would have done had dance classes had not left him close to breaking. Natasha and Loki staggered home looking as though they had been through hell and back and nobody had allowed them to collect the t-shirts on the way out.

So it wasn’t until he saw Sigyn the next day with Steve in the coffee shop that he suddenly remembered. Mostly it was the girl very obviously checking out Sigyn that helped him remember what Natasha suggested.

He knew from watching others that it could be a make or break thing, apparently some people weren’t comfortable with their partners being bisexual go figure! He didn’t want to mess things up with Sigyn, things seemed to be going good, nice even.

“Isn’t this supposed to be Jane’s shift?” Steve asked him, not as a co-worker but a customer today. The man had bland coffee tastes, Sigyn got her usual pumpkin spice latte, she was determined to fill up before they were replaced with the peppermint drinks come winter.

“Yeah but I have extra classes this afternoon, she had extra classes this morning, so we switched places,” Loki rattled off.

“Oh okay,” Steve said grabbing his boring coffee and adding no sugar or milk, he was just that type that liked his drinks simple. Sigyn was halfway finished with her latte before Steve could even dare attempt drinking his scalding drink.

“Sigyn can I have a word?” he asked, there were no other customers waiting for a drink at the moment so now was a good time.

“Sure,” Sigyn nodded, Steve pretended to make himself scarce by reading a book at Sigyn’s usual spot by the window, clearly he was waiting for Sigyn. Right! They were classmates. He’d almost forgotten. “What’s up?” she asked looking a little worried.

“Ah uh, I should have mentioned before,” Loki said thinking it was a little weird to mention this here and now, he should have waited, damn it, but now he couldn’t just not say it could he? “I,” he hesitated, Sigyn nervously began downing her coffee like a mad woman, “I’m bi?”

“Oh… that’s all?” She breathed a heavy sigh of relief, a nervous giggle escaped her, “I uh, mean no offence or anything Loki but it was kinda obvious?”

“You can’t tell if someone is bisexual by the way they dress and act,” Loki pointed out, well Sigyn was amazing maybe she could?

“True,” She nodded radiating cheer and warmth as she pulled out her phone and showed him the screen, “But meddling billionaire’s have no filter when you ply them with whisky.”

It was a photo of Loki and Tony kissing… well no Loki’s hand was quite clearly down Tony’s pants. It had been a rather strange night of drinking and more drinking, apparently Loki decided that night he was Bi and being a scientist needing to test this theory out. Loki had of course been happy to have an attractive guy make out with him, apparently Tony had a thing for potential rock stars? It didn’t matter, Tony got his answer and Loki got a half remembered fuck, it was a good half remembered fuck.

“I am going to murder him,” Loki threatened, it was a lie of course and Sigyn laughed, clearly not offended at all and used to Tony’s antics.

“If it helps,” She said quite calmly, “It doesn’t bother me that you’re bi Loki, we have that in common.”

“Oh, ah, I see,” Loki smiled, “Well good?”

“Good,” Sigyn grinned, “Does this mean we’re still going to meet up this weekend?” she asked.

“Of course, I want to see how you react to plants,” he smirked.

“Why plants?” Sigyn asked caught off guard, but Loki refused to reveal his plot to show her around the plant exhibition. It wasn’t just about plants, there was also some arts and crafts sections and something about home-made wine. “I knew it, you’re on their side, plotting against me.”

“Ah yes, me and my legion of hydrangeas,” Loki smirked.

“That’ll be a good band name,” They both jumped, there was Natasha… in daylight hours looking as though she hadn’t slept a week. By her side Tony, who had not slept in a week, “Legion of hydrangeas.”

“Nah you want something more badass, Legion of Cacti,” Tony said waking up now he was within arms reach of coffee. Sigyn pulled her coffee cup away from him.

“Wouldn’t you be more badass with Legion of Wolfs bane?” Sigyn countered.

“Wolfs bane legion?” Steve countered.

“Just take your coffee and go, all of you," he said filling up the various cups. Natasha liked Mocha, Steve was happy with his still scalding coffee, Sigyn got her refill of Pumpkin Spice while Tony had what Steve called heart attack juice.

“You’re supposed to smile when-” Steve grabbed Tony by the shoulder and gently steered him out of the building.

“Thanks,” Natasha nodded, that was all he was going to get out of the exhausted… possible dance student. There was some speculation she might be a classics student.

Before Loki could say goodbye to Sigyn she brought him into a kiss, it was a soft quick thing, nothing but a fond goodbye but it managed to turn his legs to jelly and leave him with a dopey smile as she pulled away grinning. He was to busy mooning over Sigyn as she left, especially the way her hips swayed that he forgot to mention the traces of black lipstick.

The girl that had been checking Sigyn out glared at him, ‘ Yeah she’s mine! ’ she stuck out his tongue, she surprised him by returning the gesture.

Their second date went well until Sigyn lost a fight with a prickly pair cactus, Tony laughed and laughed, the fact that they had to buy said cactus because it now had her blood on it made Tony laugh even harder. He bought the cactus and crown and sash, crowning it the vanquisher of Sigyn.

“I told you,” Sigyn groused poking her bandaged forearm, “Wait till Fred and Hudson hear about this, it’ll make them bold!”

Loki kissed her, she smiled at him in a very silly way that made his insides squirm and wiggle in delight. Her feathery touches, her patience all made him light up, he was certain others were mocking him for becoming so sappy, but he didn’t care.

She responded to him with affection and kindness, something he had not really had in a relationship before. At least not on this sort of level. Sigyn was never ashamed about hugging him, or just gently brushing her fingers through his hair. Why did that one feel so good? He liked her braiding his hair or just running her nails along his scalp.

“Next you’ll be writing love songs and giving each other promise rings,” Tony fluttered his eyes at Loki the next morning. Ah so the mad bastard had finally got some sleep.

That… might be a little true, he had begun to write one (just one!) Song for Sigyn, he couldn’t help it, when inspiration struck he had got it down on paper. But he would not admit that Tony, not when he was operating at full brain capacity while Loki was struggling to remember what day of the week it was.

Instead, he sent Sigyn a text ‘ Stark is annoying me, send help! ’

Her response was instant ‘ Mention Justin Hammer ’ why? Who was that? She sent him a list of conversation starters that included that name.

“Did you notice the university newspaper this morning Natasha?” Loki said.

“We have a newspaper?” Tony asked.

“Apparently someone called Justin Hammer-” Tony hissed like a feral cat and zoomed off shouting something about cheap copy cats.

“Tell Sigyn that was mean,” Natasha said holding up her mug to be filled with heart attack juice.

Loki later learnt that Tony had been the originator but Sigyn had perfected this particular blend of coffee so strong it could fuel rockets. Loki stuck with natural coffee, coffee that did not make people stay awake for days on end.

Loki on pure instinct refilled her mug, then looked horrified when he realized what he had done! The corporations had conditioned him! Natasha smirked, “Serves you right,” she said sliding off the plastic barstool Bucky had fished out from a dumpster.

*****

Usually it wasn’t a good idea to move into somewhere with a girlfriend of a couple of months, but the rent was cheap and the house was decent enough. Much better than the university dorms anyway. They had plenty of space in spite of the fact eight people lived here, there was even a small garden.

It wasn’t a good idea to share a bedroom either, but nobody could blame Loki and if their relationship ended suddenly for some weird reason Sigyn could share or swap with someone else. But Loki didn’t like thinking about that.

He liked his relationship with Sigyn, she made him feel loved, special, like he could do anything he wanted and that was okay. She supported him, coming to the café’s and clubs he played at never anything short of happy grins and warm affection.

Whenever he felt those pangs of ‘I’ve fucked up and should have listened to Odin’ moments she was there holding his hand reminding him it was okay to follow his dreams. He could not understand why someone as loving and kind as Sigyn would want him, but he could not imagine his life without her now.

In turn, he supported her art shows, Sigyn it turned out was a talented painter, both with traditional and digital mediums. She was already building a regular client base and looking to publish some books, which featured her work, there was also talks of a graphic novel that she and Steve were working on together. Something about an Atalantian prince.

She liked to draw him, he didn’t mind, he was in fact flattered she found him that interesting. He was always happy to spend time with her regardless of what they were doing, especially when the Uni classes became more serious. It was nice to just share a comfortable space with someone, someone who warmed him and reminded him to carry on. That everything was okay.

Finally, Loki got to meet Fred and Hudson, Hudson was huge, Sigyn had grossly undersold just how big he was. He became the Christmas tree that year he was so big. But Fred, the spider plant who hung from the ceiling was almost as long as Loki was tall, clearly Sigyn had given up dealing with the babies and just let him grow thinking it would kill off the plant.

“Maybe you have a secret superpower-” Loki began to suggest as he placed them in the most ideal locations.

“-Plants are spiteful,” Sigyn hissed threatening the plant who did not respond.

“Maybe that’s what feeding, all that hate?” Loki suggested.

“Oooh that’s sneaky, so typical of-” Sigyn paused looking at Loki who was struggling not to laugh, he blinked not understanding why she had suddenly become so serious, “You have pretty eyes.”

He blushed always caught off guard by her compliments he couldn’t help it, she smiled taking hold of his hand and kissing him. His entire being fluttered as she slowly deepened the kiss forgetting for a moment that they were in the process of decorating the house when Bucky walked in complaining about the new coffee machine.

“Loki!” Bucky yelled, “You're the coffee expert-” Loki groaned pulling away from Sigyn who giggled, her whole body rocked against him.

“-I should have worked in the bakery,” He pinched his nose, though he could not regret his choice of work now, it had led him to meeting Sigyn.

“You know… I need help with our bed,” Sigyn offered him an escape, and he took it with a grin, our bed did sound rather lovely.

#Loki Bingo 2020 #Loki/Sigyn #Logyn #Coffee Shop AU #loki x sigyn #Loki fic #Loki Fanfic #steve rogers #bucky barnes #jane foster #Tony Stark #Student!Loki #Student!Sigyn #Modern AU

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what-the-hekate · 6 years

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The Becoming

There’s a lot I want to do with this blog, and I’m still putting it together in my head. I do know that I want to use it as a space to share my thoughts on witchcraft and related subjects, some of it centered around research into particular topics, and some of it just what I’ve been thinking about.

Right now, I have a lot of stray thoughts that aren’t ready to be developed into posts of their own. As I sat down to type some of them out and see where they went, I ended up running pretty far with a piece about my personal journey into witchcraft. And that seems as good a place as any to start.

I suppose I’ve always been attracted to the strange and supernatural, but I didn’t think of myself a witch (or even consider it) until I was a teenager. This was during the teen witch craze of the 1990s, when the movie The Craft and the TV series Charmed reintroduced the idea of witchcraft as something appealing and empowering to young women. I don’t remember which of my friends first got the idea to dabble in witchcraft; maybe it was me, maybe not. I do remember that someone got hold of a copy of a Silver RavenWolf book, probably Teen Witch, and that we had to pass it around because the girl who actually owned it was afraid her parents would find it in her room.

Looking back, I have mixed feelings about those books. I feel lucky that I was the right age at the right time to have that option offered to me—that I was a teenage girl in the 90s listening to Tori Amos and Liz Phair and Ani DiFranco and Paula Cole and Alanis Morissette, and that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on TV, and that pop culture in general was telling me I had power at the point in my life when I could’ve felt the most powerless.

Which Witch? A wordgame

At the same time, I wish there had been a greater variety of voices to hear about witchcraft from. Silver RavenWolf may have been a driving force behind a generation’s interest in witchcraft and Wicca, but her books were also full of bad information and skewed heavily towards one version of witchcraft. She doesn’t clearly distinguish between “witch” and “Wiccan”, and I think the passage in To Ride a Silver Broomstick about her associations with those two words explains why, but I also think it’s important to be clear that they aren’t wholly interchangeable. You can be a witch and not be a Wiccan; her books are about how to be a Wiccan. That’s what I tried to be as a teenager, and ultimately it’s why I drifted away from witchcraft in general over the next few years.

(Let me go ahead and say: Wicca is right for some people, and that’s fine. It’s not right for me.)

Some of my aversion to the Wiccan version of being a witch is instinctual and was pinged early on. when I was reading those Silver RavenWolf books. For me, being a witch was about female empowerment and independence, so I was confused when I got to the bit about worshiping a dual deity, the Goddess and the God. I never gelled with the Horned God on any level. It wasn’t to do with the similarity to the Christian devil; I wasn’t raised religious and I had no particularly strong feelings about anything in the Christian universe. I just didn’t feel at all compelled to adopt a central deity (or two) in general, and I really wasn’t interested in a male one.

Nor did I really care for the heterosexual duality of the Goddess/God, and all the binary sexual symbolism of things like the Great Rite and chalices and athames. At the time, I wasn’t consciously aware that I was queer (probably because it just wasn’t a possibility that I was exposed to very much). But I reacted to this whole Goddess/God thing turning up in my magical female empowerment pretty much the same way I reacted to a romance subplot suddenly taking center stage in a book I was enjoying. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, but I couldn’t help being annoyed that it was distracting from the stuff I was really there for.

Honestly, what probably played the biggest overt role in my move away from Wicca was simply that it was a religion. I’m just not cut out for religions. I find them interesting, and there are pieces of them that work for me sometimes, but on the whole it’s just not something that’s ever going to be a part of my life. Wicca is a very demanding religion. It’s highly ritualized, from the major holidays (the eight sabbats, plus the 12-13 esbats) down to the daily practices of spellwork. There is just a lot to do, and a lot of specificity about when and how to do it. I have enough trouble disciplining myself to do the other things I’m obligated to do in my life, like work and school and errands and keeping my house reasonably tidy and eating a vegetable on a regular basis. I was way worse at this at 14 or 15 years old. I got tired of rituals fast.

So TL;DR, I did not end up being a Wiccan. And because I’d gotten the idea that, in real life, witch = Wiccan, I didn’t think of myself as a witch anymore, either. If I have any lasting bitterness toward that segment of my path, that’s it. The identity of “witch” was an empowering, beautiful thing that I wish I’d been able to keep in my life even after my dalliance with Wicca was over. There were definitely times I could’ve used it.

In the years after that, I kept on being a little spooky and magical and all the things I’d been that had drawn me to witchcraft in the first place, just without a central identity to pin it all to. It’s interesting how things drift in and out of focus and concreteness depending on whether they have a name. The witch fad gave way to something else the way fads do, Buffy and Charmed eventually ended, and I didn’t think much about witches again until recently.

There’s a lot to delve into about why witchcraft has its resurgences when it has them; probably there are already a lot of essays on the subject. But generally, I think you tend to find women thinking witchy thoughts at times when they’re particularly under threat.

Much of my early/middle-early adult life coincided with the Obama administration. I’d only become really aware of politics toward the end of the Bush era. When 9/11 happened, I was in the middle of an unrelated nervous breakdown and just did not have the spoons to think critically about political issues; I was also 16 years old. I didn’t realize how fucked up things like the PATRIOT Act were until years down the line. I was in the dark in more ways than one, dealing with undiagnosed depression and anxiety and having to claw my way up out of its depths without even medication to give me a boost.

A Musical Interlude: What does this have to do with witchcraft...?

Two things kept me just this side of insane when I was in the depths: writing and listening to music. Of the latter, I still had the female artists who’d taught me how to be a woman, thank fucking god for them. And as I was trying to find a foothold in the long slow climb out of my depressive pit, I’d come across a Finnish band called HIM; for whatever reason, their particular brand of gothy romantic macabre intellectual music was exactly what my soul resonated with at that moment. I realized that I could vibe with men sometimes, provided they were the type of men who wrote poetry and wore eyeliner and a lot of black. This is probably how I ended up listening to Nine Inch Nails.

I was aware of NIN, as anyone who experienced the 90s was; even if that wasn’t your particular scene, you heard “Closer”. A lot of women around my age credit David Bowie in Labyrinth for their early confusing sexuality-related experience; mine was probably the “Closer” video. I think this explains a lot about me. But besides that, I hadn’t paid much attention to NIN until I ran into them again in 2007 or so, when they were doing this crazy metafictional thing called Year Zero around their latest album. I don’t remember exactly how I found it; maybe via Lost, which had its own thing like that and led me to the niche narrative medium of alternate reality games. Anyway, it was highly political, which was not what I remembered NIN being about, and as I was listening through the band’s back catalog and reading a bazillion interviews with brooding, sarcastic, witty, thoughtful Trent Reznor (look, I’m not completely gay), I got sucked into this thing.

I don’t remember whether I read this while I was diving into Year Zero or after, but in some interview or other I found out that Trent had just come out of his own darkness. He’d struggled with drugs and depression and nearly died, and when he finally got his shit together, he realized how much he’d been oblivious to, in his own life and in the world around him. Year Zero was political because he’d woken up, and it woke me up.

It’s interesting to me now to think that female music and male music acted like an alternating current in my life, one then the other driving me forward, yet I got absolutely zilch out of the hetero-duality of Wicca. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s also interesting that the avatars of that dynamic in my life were Tori Amos and Trent Reznor, since they had an important impact on each others’ lives too (that I didn’t know about till much later). There’s a bit in Tori’s book Piece By Piece where she talks about reconciling with the angry masculine energies she was drawn to at points in her life (I can’t remember if she specifically mentions Trent in that part, but I assume it’s at least somewhat about him), and her realization that she had a need to tap into energy like that sometimes. If anyone is the embodiment of feminine power to me it’s Tori, and reading her words about needing to channel masculine rage did and does resonate with me about the time in my life when male artists’ energies were what I needed to survive and evolve.

So anyway, back on the path: my dark times led me to Nine Inch Nails which, while the music was also helping me heal my soul, also focused my brain on the world I’d been ignoring. I became aware of, and pissed off about, politics in no time flat. I devoured Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. I watched C-SPAN of my own volition. In short, I realized that the system is fucked up. I realized that the things happening in America were literally insane, and I knew insanity. I learned the word “patriarchy”, but I’d known the thing it named for a long, long time. This was also the point when I realized I’d exhausted my lifetime stores of patience for bullshit and being fucked with; they have not, to this day, been replenished.

And then, like a lot of people, I thought the Obama years meant everything was okay forever. I mean, god, I sure felt like I deserved a break. There were ups and downs even then, but I really had no idea how fast and how far we could plummet down again until 2016.

Witch 2: The Rewitchening

I don’t believe you can be a woman and be aware of what’s going on in the world and not be angry. As I write this, my home state of Alabama has just passed an amendment (which may be useless; we do have the longest mess of a constitution in the world) aimed at undermining women’s right to an abortion. We have a president who says the most vile things about women on a regular basis, and a new Supreme Court Justice who is a rapist. There are a lot of rapists. There are a lot of men who beat up their wives and girlfriends and then go on to shoot up a school or a nightclub or a shopping mall, and we keep acting surprised, and we keep forcing women to share custody with their abusers and berating them for being abused. Women, everywhere, are under attack.

If there’s a single predominant reason I came back to witchcraft now, and why I think a lot of women are coming to witchcraft now, this is it. We are threatened, and that idea of female empowerment and strength and the potential to be feared by those who would harm us and to be fearless... it is as potent and attractive to us now as it was in the 90s, and the 60s, and probably so many times before.

I am a witch. I don’t belong to a religion, and I don’t feel obligated to be a witch according to anyone’s definition but my own. My witchery is a product of the path I’ve taken to this point, and is highly focused around female empowerment; that said, I recognize that other people’s witchery has a different shape, and different (or no) gender, and is religious or isn’t, and I acknowledge and respect that, too. I have zero interest in telling anyone else how to be a witch, or whether they can be.

I started this blog because I need to express myself, but also because I want to contribute to a diversity of voices about witchcraft that wasn’t available to me as a teenager. I want to put things out there in case someone else needs them. Honestly, I’m writing and gathering all the things that will eventually be here for a hypothetical, imaginary-but-maybe-real young witch who is maybe just a ghost of my teenage past, to tell her the things I wish I could’ve heard, and just to remind her that no one can tell you how to be a witch, and no one should try, and that there are so many different ideas and beliefs and voices and experiences out there for her to learn from, including the ones inside herself.

That’s my origin story.

#op #witchblr #personal

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camigani · 6 years

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Update: My Trip to China

Hi, all, it’s been an insane couple of months! Where have I been and why haven’t I been updating? Well, I’ve finally moved in a completely new place all by myself with a new job and lots of pleasant isolation in a tiny town by the sea. Right before that, my family took me overseas to China for a final family trip. I only got food poisoning twice. Oh, and I caught a cold. -v-

LONG POST UNDER THE CUT!!

Things I noticed that generally happen in China:

1) There are a lot of couples! Compared to Japan and Taiwan, I noticed the people here are more open about traveling and showing affection (and discourse) publicly. Where are the lonesome ones? Well, my brother deduced that because Chinese has so many people, the single people stay at home. TvT

2) Women like to cling onto arms or hold hands with their friends or lovers. My Shanghainese housemate was like this, too. I guess it’s a cultural thing.

3) Men tend to smoke, not women. You find women smoking sometimes, but it’s usually associated with being dirty and shameless. The men tend to cough and spit a lot. Everyone openly coughs and sneezes. There are no common words for “Excuse me” and “Bless you/Salud/Gesundheit/etc” in the Chinese language. It feels rude, but that’s how they are.

4) The subways are hi-tech. The navigation is better than Japan and Taiwan. The maps are friendly and easy to read for Chinese and English-literate people. Similar to an airport, however, you have to pass your bags and luggages through a scanning system and have your liquid containers examined before security allows you to board trains. The rides are cleaner.

5) In modern areas, everyone is very well-dressed. They have a fashion style evolved to incorporating modern and slightly retro looks. Unlike Taiwan and Japan, you don’t see people wearing traditional clothing unless it’s for shows or homely occasions.

6) There are cameras everywhere. It’s like London crosses the Patriot Act. Cameras on the highways, cameras on the streets, cameras in the subways. They use facial recognition and license plate recognition. A price of freedom to pay, but because of this system, we were able to track down one of our luggages that we left in a taxi cab. (Haha.) Security checked where my parents got off onto the subway, found the license plate of the taxi cab, and phoned the taxi driver to tell him to meet my parents at XX station to drop off their luggage.

7) They, uh, don’t like Japanese things in China. There are very few Japanese cars, buildings, and brands, going as far as vandalizing Japanese chain stores and boycotting products despite being safer and better. You can say it’s attributed to history and culture. Chinese people view self-humiliation in a different light. They can be quite envious.

8) Infrastructure is king. Not being political; from an objective outlook, the US spends a hefty amount of tax money on military. China invests in infrastructure. There are a lot of building projects going into apartments, museums, preserving historical sites, and parks and recreation. It’s at the point where national parks are completely paved and tiled. (Kinda defeats the purpose of national parks, but at least you don’t have to worry about muddy shoes.)

9) Local vendors that don’t belong to companies or corporations may sometimes be unsanitary, but the food quality is generally cheaper and tastier. Otherwise, if it wasn’t tasty, how would they sell?

10) Hype isn’t always a good thing. Just about every restaurant we’ve gone to where it was packed with people was just okay. Quiet hole-in-the-walls have a personable charm, quicker service, and equally if not better food. Real talk, the original ma po tofu shop serves tofu that is extremely spicy and bitter. Not worth it.

11) Public facilities like museums and libraries are taken quite seriously. The government believes when things are free, people are more civilized. Go figure, yet in my experiences, people were. Not sure about the museums since there’s a lot of Chinese history and culture to go through, anyway, but the public libraries are utilized to the fullest. You need identification to get inside, and every then, you’re only allowed to bring certain material into the library after going through a baggage and metal scan. There are lockers for your things. It was school time next to a university when I visited, so every seat was occupied with a busy Chinese scholar with a stack of books reviewing notes and practicing words or formulas. It was pretty surreal. I didn’t take pictures, but I’ll let you know there were very few fictional books where I visited.

12) Chinese people don’t listen to signs or tourist warning information. Seriously, as someone who’s part Chinese, myself, the tourists can be extremely disrespectful, and it’s super embarrassing. It’s usually the older generation because...well, if you know your history, you might know why they’re like this. But if it says no cellphones and pictures, you’ll find cellphones and pictures. Lower your sound? Someone’s yelling on their phone about the most trivial thing like what they ate for dinner. Stay on the path? Let me just hop this fence and proceed to head towards this dangerous slippery waterfall to take a mediocre selfie. Yeah, it wasn’t a great time. Someone like Germany would blow their brains out.

13) BRING YOUR OWN TOILET PAPER

I cannot stress enough how precious soft butt paper is. The kind they sell in China are sandpaper scrolls on your tender cheeks. Bring your own tp from home if you are to survive the plight of the outdoor public restroom. And soap or sanitizer. There is normally running water in bathrooms, but no soap! What’s the point if the bacteria is going to spread through the water?! Be prepared for squatting, turds, smells, and wet rims. Unless you stake out in your western hotel all day, you WILL find a squat toilet, and there is a high chance it WILL smell or be mysteriously slippery.

Anyway, here are some pictures I lazily took. The descriptions are all on the top of the photos.

We went to Shanghai first. The people are meh at best. But the architecture is interesting because of the heavy western influences. (Missing obligatory picture of The Bund because I exported it somewhere else.)

Beef noodle soup! My favorite! I like it with a little spiciness. They made the noddles with a knee paddle. Only $2 USD!

I’m not sure how to explain it correctly, nor do I know what the exact name of the method used to make the noodles is. I tried to explain it in the crude drawing I made below.

...

This is KFC.

The majority of the trip was spent in Chengdu in Sichuan Province. It’s hot and humid in the summer, but it was just right when we went.

There are a lot of open markets. Look at all the meat and produce! They even had morel mushrooms. Too bad we didn’t have a stove or butter in our hotel.

We visited Kuanzhai Street, a historical alley consisting of wide and narrow paths with historical buildings. Its initial intent is to let tourists experience some of the old culture of China, but nowadays, there are a bunch of vendors who try to capitalize on how many people go there. It gets very crowded.

A most mysterious wall of memes.

Not bad.

Sugar-blown rooster! It tastes like those rainbow lollipops you sometimes see at fairs or candy shops. You get to blow up the sugar, yourself. An interactive show. :)

Burnt sugar rooster! It tastes like the top of a creme brûlée.

Went on a tour to a panda rehabilitation center. Chengdu is a popular spot for earthquakes, and the one in 2017 left pandas injured and traumatized. This place helps them recuperate until they’re well enough to go back to the public zoos. Outside to greet us was a 5-some of panda statues. The one that stood out was the one on the far right with one leg. I thought he was just leaning his leg behind him, but it turns out, his leg is missing! Affirmative action?

(Missing black and white panda because my good captures were all videos.) The red panda tails are so fluffy and gravity-defying. The tails are like a foot long and stay straight in the air.

A Tibetan-like feast! You eat with your hands, and they give you gloves. Everything was fresh and tasty. They served us yak milk. It tastes like if you mix 1 part milk, 2 parts water, so it’s not bad if you don’t mind the watery taste. Over here, your wealth is measured by the number of white yaks you own.

I’m missing pictures, but there was a good number of performances with singing, dancing, and conga lines at our table. My dad got really into it. Because some Chinese cultures are normally reserved, they weren’t used to his disco dancing. Later, they called him Uncle Buddha. And they said he looked high.

Jiuzhaigou. It was closed since the 2008 earthquake due to high levels of mountain and road collapses. It opened recently, so the locals were surprised to hear that it was open again. You can even take pictures wearing local minority Chinese garb. I think it was around $3 USD, but we needed to haul butt.

WATCH THE PICKLE!! We stayed at a decent hotel, but a popular breakfast dish in China is porridge with various kinds of pickled vegetables. I figured I needed vegetables to help me “go” easier during our travels, so I ate a little of everything. So did my dad. My brother and surprisingly my mom, who eats more veggies than anyone in our family, skipped out. Two hours of a bus ride later, I threw up on the street. My dad threw up minutes after I did. We’re pretty sure the old used for the spicy pickle was stale.

Eh, what can you do?

A clear limestone lake. Surprisingly not many people here. It was also very quiet and clean.

We went to Leshan to see the giant Buddha. It’s not too bad of a walk, maybe because it’s at sea level. (Two days prior, Jiuzhaigou was at 7000ft/2100m, so it was really hard to hike without getting tired.) This thing is HUGE. You might be able to see tiny people in the upper right-hand corner for scale. Only take pictures on the Buddha’s right side!

By the way, there are a lot of little statues and tiny Buddha carvings littered on the hike up there. Per Chinese superstition, you are not supposed to take pictures of them. Some either house evil spirits that you can take home with you or you might trap good spirits from spreading fortune.

Very pretty architecture behind the statue. You can drink tea here for about $5, however, it’s a tourist trap! Don’t waste your money and time. See how these pictures don’t have tourists in them? It’s because they were all caught up drinking tea and sitting on their butts.

Aw, the picture rotated. Anyway, here’s a fly modern monk with Nike’s and a smartphone.

Kinda mad I can’t remember this place, but there were many elephant themes in this tourist town we visited. My brother (listed in the picture below with the ONLY pair of long pants and jacket he stupidly packed for the 12-day trip) found a mantou shop that sells these long buns for only 1 YUAN. That’s like $0.17 USD. As a bun advocate, he said they were tasty.

DPRAUNNDKA (Someone was drunk, alright.)

Hot pot! Taiwan was better, and the Guangdong guys were too afraid to try to spicy broth. (Like Hong Kong, haha. Because Cantonese people don’t like spicy food, according to Himaruya.) It was okay, but we only had 30 minutes to eat before catching a show. I don’t have pictures, but the sets and performances were really cool!

Gelatins! Sketchy at best but tasty-looking!

A pleasant view of the hike up Umeishan. Right past this chasm are monkeys! If I panned my phone down, you would’ve seen trash. This is from the monkeys eating tourists’ food. You have to watch your pockets and bags because they’ll go through them for kicks, usually not even for food. And don’t wear red because it intimidates them.

You can hire rickshaw(?) carriers to take you up the mountain. Great for elderly or lazy people. I think it’s about $32 per way.

Famous Emeishan statue thing. You are supposed to take pictures relevant to your zodiac sign, so there are twelve positions like a clock. It’s COLD up there. But the hike makes you warm! And there’s a cable cart that takes you up most of the way.

Zoomed-in luna month friend. It was behind a temple door. The wings looked so soft.

I forgot what this trail was called. The whole hike was about 7 km. Supposed to be 10, but it started to rain, so we skipped the end. Lots of tourists in places, but very nice scenery. Walk fast to avoid smokers. Why do they smoke while walking? :/

Beer Garden in Chengdu City. It’s a strip of bars and clubs where foreigners can sing American pop songs and drink beer. Lots of “trashy” women with rich drunk men. It’s an insane atmosphere with rich-looking people and every bar being full. Seriously. I’d show more pictures, but you really need a video to get an idea of the vibe. Here’s one of Goose Island, whatever that means. Next to it were two hedge sheep. Look at this shit, there’s a picture of the White House on the poster! Ahhh! XD

Chengdu Global Center Mall

Cheese and rice, I thought Tokyo’s AEON Laketown mall was huge. This place has a hotel and a water theme park built into it with a grocery store and food court in the basement. At this point, my family’s feet hurt from all the walking. -.-’

Boo. We came too late. All the boba was sold out. Hey, cat poop coffee on the top.

Just why?

Last full day in Chengdu. Here’s the outside of the museum. You have to wait in line to get screened before going in, however, it’s free.

An underground strip mall. Okay here me out, we tried very hard to look for bootleg Chinglish shirts, but we could NOT find any. The Chinese locals seemed to either snatch them up or we weren’t looking in the right places.

lol and that’s it. We went back to Shanghai for a full day after that, but I caught major food poisoning from something I ate. It was bad. My bowels felt all twisty and uncomfortable. So I spent the entire day in the hotel while my family had a blast eating food and looking at architecture. My brother found a slew of funny Chinglish menus. I wish I had the pictures. If I find them, I’ll pass them along.

Thanks for reading and I’ll try to update stuff when I get settled down in my new place. :3

#china #not hetalia

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nothingbutaspaceman-writings · 7 years

Text

Bipolar [lyrics to the 2016 EP]

by popular demand....

maybe I’ll post the lyrics to the uncompleted actual final track one day.

deserteclipse.bandcamp.com/

I yearn to recall simpler times When suicidal thoughts were comforting An occasional hobby

When I found Shakespeare’s tragedies funny And superfluous his comedies “I cried to dream again”

Saccharin’s no honey Marie shared her cake Comfort Eagle and pretty ribbons of pink upon guillotines

It’s the artificiality It’s a fissure to me A trap sending monsters to their grave

Sacrificing sanity’s a must

Sumaria or bust!

“But you’re healthy, you’re writing, You’re in a band, The one you love, you have their hand You don’t have it bad!”

Everything is relative Eloquence and artistry are semantics Brain and mind appreciate diversity Their feuds devastate the body (Hypersomnia is so tiring)

If being happy wasn’t dependent on chemistry, My blood polarity would be blasphemy (Nothing promises pleasure) Records/stories are spun every night Framing means nothing I’m just biding my time

Tommy, You warned me Gold medals in the rain

Tommy, They left me Autodidact in pain

Tommy, I forced me My legs hurt from dancing

—-

Tipitty tip tapping Tapping tapping Tap tap tapping Tipping Tapping Because if I don’t, The bees, they will escape!

I feel them in the, in the, in the pockets of my joints Knuckles pop, poppity-pip-pop to extend their prison-stay-stay-stay Stay Stay STAY! STAY!

The keys clickity-clack, clickity-clack (Moo! Ha) making words and words and words and words and words…….. Moo! HA! WORDS! HA!

(NOBODY CARES)

My foot’s a’movin’ And feet’s a’groovin’ Up and down and down and up and up and all around Because if I don’t, The worms will crawl into my eyes The ankle-breaking heel-gyrating toe-spanking do-si-doing Keeps them a’shakin’ Below my clanking knees

I’m crying Please. I can’t stop writing My soul is overfilling my body And leaking From under my tongue and tear ducts

(NOBODY CARES)

It hurts So badly (I just want to sleep.) I can’t even catch my breath I’m going to start hyperventilating It hurts So badly (NOBODY CARES) My soul is leaking Spilling onto the floor And I just cleaned! (I think my teeth are bleeding From smiling much too hard) Please, forgive me (You can’t argue with chemistry In this box, I am suffocating)

(NOBODY CARES)

I slept most of days away this week And now I can’t find time to blink

I hate sleeping I hate waking

There’s no in between There’s always thinking

Pour me a drink, please Give me paresthesia

Everything tastes like coffee You can’t argue with chemistry (NOBODY CARES)

My sleepless identity Is my disordered personality I am my pathology My sickness defines me

—–

Passion: noun A powerful, compelling emotion or feeling usually associated with love or hate; Also an enthusiastically consuming fondness for an object, act, habit, etc. Its origins lie in ancient Greek and Latin, as well as Middle English from words meaning “to suffer, submit, or endure”

I trust you. Here’s a confession, Please know I don’t trust easy, but as long as I do, I’ll keep confessing Oh, I’ll keep confessing:

I was four when I first considered suicide I wanted to jump into a deep pool though I couldn’t swim Some would call this feeling of wanting to jump “vertigo” I don’t have a word/phrase for it Most times, I think “missed opportunity” At the moment I had no concept of afterlife or oblivion I hardly understood “drowning” But it sounded right Still does in hindsight

Assimilation into what gives life Knowing escape is impossible Knowing escape is incomprehensible There’s probably a word for that

But I guess… I just don’t… I don’t know it yet

—–

Cognitive dissonance is my constant, isn’t it?

Intentionally unintelligible Screen fed Scream dead

I want to be heard Not just heard

Fuck, fucking fuck Rewrite More blood Learn to fucking write More blood Fuck fucking fuck Rewriiiiiite

Ignite the cathartic hemoptysis Lowly fucking plagiarist There’s not enough blood Rewrite Fucking fuck Learn to fucking write What the fuck is wrong with you?

Try try again There’s not enough blood Rewrite

Do it again, get it right Fuck You’re better than this

Needs more blood Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite Needs more blood More blood, more blood, more blood Needs more blood Fuck!

—–

This apathetic anxiety is conflicting within me My suicidal ideation is misplaced reciprocation With its Psychomotor agitation conflating insomnia-fueled deliberations Thoughts and veins in a race; pumping red cells and neurons as I Pace, pace Pace, pace I don’t care, but know I should I would care, but know I can’t

Nihilists have the righter idea And the solipsistic to an extent: Life has no inherent value Conscripted shepherds are buried at sea

I’m drifting from shoreline

Fear and boredom cannot cohabitate I’m so numb… Existential spacial awareness fleeting I’m so numb… Gnawing nails, spitting blood Luring sharks in the flood I’m so numb…

Tying cement shoes as I slip into seabed Inhaling a wife worth of salt, Lot’s Lungs filling like the Exodus plague Entrenched by an excessive weight That snaps my necklace Experiment intended to fail Though if I had kicked myself beyond the pale… Who is gonna argue with the results?

Since when was my end something you could contend? Who are you to tell me how I feel?!

I’m aware of my mistakes Don’t remind me! I’m aware of my mistakes They taught me knotting I’m aware of my mistakes They haunt me, pushing Don’t remind me

A forsaken toxic desert, sandstorming a dry drowning

The sharks are… (they’re just fish) The sharks are… Surrounding The sharks are… (they’re just fish) The sharks are… Devouring The sharks are… (they’re just fish) The sharks are… Expounding

Somewhere beyond this sea My angel stands on golden sands Beyond stars, beyond the moon My heart will lead me there soon Happy, I’ll be And never again… Never again… Will I go sailing

-----

BONUS TRACK

Factories of plastic produce society's static Routine after routine, spick and span The children are laughing with eyes and ears shut Schools and parents pass doctrines of Grow The Hell Up No time to play, no time to lose Week after week, plights and plans Sell your soul, make a quick buck American dream? You’re shit out of luck No honor for a military losing their lives Being fodder for an American Reich Money is king with no change to back it up Plutocracy thrives off the worst of us Silence is key in this gilded age Reject the dissenters Sound Drowns Sound Bounds Hear them come a-marching Beating a drum of rotten rawhide Look at the puppets, see how they dance, They look like little people with little pairs of pants Watch them speak, watch them pray, gaze at The scrambling when they haven't been told what to say Isn't it cute, isn't it neat? Isn't it such a fucking treat?! Isn’t it fun, isn’t it rad? How could something publicized be any bad?! A house divided surely cannot stand They cite century old manuscripts To justify their intolerance Slavers seeking asylum Unbeknownst to industrialization History is catalog of predictable ironies Morality is but a fleeting zeitgeist Occupy the cities, blood up to our knees Tear down these walls, chop down cherry trees Taking back what was stolen We smile as Big Brother’s watching Violence begets violence Reciprocated gouging leave us blind Real men fight real fights, They don’t piss themselves over petty gun rights The second revolution won’t be fought with arms Come and keep your comrade warm Power to the people but people are yet to be found Power-hungry steeples point to abstract nouns Power-outlets breed disinformation Plug in your eyes, unplug your mind Unpopular opinion is on the rise Feed them your lies, dispose of our lives [Unpublished opinion will be your demise] The Binary State The only thing we love is our right to hate One on one You against us Tyrant or patriot? Only prying eyes judge Become the narrative of complacency Bow to your corporate masters Alone, we are nothing Together, we’re a swarm “If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man”

#lyrics #poetry #sad poetry #dark poetry #depressing poetry #depression #suicide ideation #sadness #nothingbutaspaceman #desert eclipse #death metal

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mastcomm · 5 years

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The Super Bowl Is Problematic. Why Can’t We Look Away?

AUSTIN CONSIDINE Friends: I know what I’m doing Sunday. I know what you’re doing Sunday. As full-time culture journalists, to ignore the Super Bowl would be a gross dereliction of duty. That’s because the Super Bowl isn’t just a game. It’s the halftime show; it’s the ads; it’s the chips and guac. It is sport but also music, dance, costumes, TV production and stage design — a pop culture event greater than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps most important, it was watched last year by roughly 100 million people: In a world of on-demand entertainment, the Super Bowl is one of the last true vestiges of an era when we all watched the same things at the same time.

But I, like a lot of sports fans, have struggled in recent years to reconcile what is beautiful about the game with what is ugly. First, there’s the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head hits — not only to concussions — which the N.F.L. actively worked to conceal. Then there are the league’s troubles with domestic abuse and race. We could unpack those for days, but let it suffice to note that Tyreek Hill still has a job and Colin Kaepernick does not.

Some fans have learned to tolerate the cognitive dissonance, or to square their free enjoyment with the ostensible free will of the players. Others, like me, have trouble shouldering our complicity with football’s worst elements and have mostly stopped watching. But regardless, fans or not, we mostly show up for the Super Bowl. Why is that?

WESLEY MORRIS Austin, I, too, have consumed less football in the last five years because the hits can be hard to watch, because the punitive, allegedly apolitical stances of the league are themselves paradoxically political. There are many amazing physical achievements in this sport. There’s endless ridiculousness. The choreographed end-zone celebration, for instance, has gleefully migrated to other sports. And the league, in spite of itself, has a muscular charitable wing.

This is to say that loving the N.F.L. means putting up with a lot. But its outsize popularity also seems a partial answer to the moral riddle that’s so openly vexed us these past two or three years. How do we enjoy the work of bad, unpleasant, corrupt people and institutions? Of criminals? Does opting into the Super Bowl experience then condone the problems of football? Can spectatorship be anything but an endorsement? It’s the conundrum of a capitalist society to the extent that it’s truly a conundrum at all.

CARYN GANZ Football is the quintessential problematic fave. And like Michael Jackson, it’s too challenging to cancel, too big to fail, too embedded in the fabric of American leisure to rip out. (For now, at least.) The Super Bowl is drama, emotion, identity, catharsis, spectacle, skill, power: It’s nearly impossible to find a viewer beyond its scope. It’s no longer possible to keep up with everything happening in television, movies, music and digital media, but the Super Bowl is one of the last gasps of the monoculture. It’s a given and a gimme: It has almost no barrier for entry — one network channel, one block of time when nobody is expected to be doing anything other than watching the Super Bowl.

And as for the ethical conundrum, ethics are under siege in every corner of our society: on social media, in Washington, in college admissions, on the music charts. In an era of “LOL nothing matters,” where does football rank on the scale of horrors? Even if your answer is “quite high,” there are 100 million other viewers willing to share the shame.

CONSIDINE Still, let’s be cleareyed: If you watch the Super Bowl, you are financially and ethically supporting the N.F.L. And yet, I rarely hear these issues surface when we talk about the Super Bowl as pop culture. I wonder why we’re so deferential? Has any Super Bowl happening or halftime show made a truly lasting cultural impact?

GANZ Oh yes, they have. Part of the power of the halftime show is its sheer reach. Music (like sports) is a powerful uniter, but so much of the way we experience it now is in isolation: via playlists shaped by our personal listening habits that are beamed directly into our headphones. A live stadium show allows 100,000 people to share an experience; the Grammys attracted 18.7 million viewers to its live broadcast. With the exception of the Eurovision song contest (which was watched by 182 million people last year), the Super Bowl is as big as it gets now for live music.

Few people (other than me) may recall which songs Madonna played during her set in 2012, but her halftime yielded a landmark pop culture moment: M.I.A. extending her middle finger on national TV. In the past decade, halftime’s meme-able mini-events have become almost as memorable as who won the game: Adam Levine’s bare torso (2019), Lady Gaga’s leap (2017), Beyoncé’s fierce “Formation” (2016), Left Shark (2015), even Bruce Springsteen’s crotch slide (2009). And we could talk about Prince’s Super Bowl all day long.

MORRIS Caryn, don’t play. You know I know Madonna’s set list from that night.

I also remember how the emotional properties of the Boston bar where I watched that game completely changed as her halftime show began. The Patriots were about to lose another Super Bowl to the Giants, and even though they were up (by a point) going into the second half, that woman and her friends seemed to lighten the mood. Men were mouthing along to “Open Your Heart.” But they were also happy to partake in the spectacle of a 53-year-old imposing her sexual-identity gender circus (a phalanx of beefcake transported her to the stage) upon a sport whose stated orientation points, non-negotiably, one way.

This is to say that the halftime show can be received multiple ways at once. It’s an event complicit in all that dismays us about American football as a whole and the N.F.L. especially: players’ physical and mental health; compensation and exploitation; the sanctioned conflation with the league and our military; the names. Kansas City’s excellent Super Bowl team is the Chiefs; and when fans are feeling confidently vicious, half the arms in the stadium begin to tomahawk chop. They’re not the so-called Redskins, and yet the team brings with it many centuries of terrible history anytime it plays — anytime its “merch” is sold.)

But the halftime show is also an event wholly outside the problems of the sport. Its stars have been imported and occasionally seem eager to practice subversion, as Madonna and Beyoncé have; to practice an exuberant nothing, as Katy Perry has. It is what its stars fight for it to be. I’m enormously excited to see what J. Lo and Shakira have fought for.

We are, though, at a really fascinating place now. An aspect of the culture is asking these entertainers to consider what it means to partake in an event that could feature any number of problematic figures. (Tyreek Hill is a star Chief.) And on Madonna’s night, in 2012, Aaron Hernandez scored one of the Patriots’ touchdowns. Six months later, he shot and killed two men.

GANZ Halftime may hover in a space outside the problems of the sport, but it has its own crises related to football’s troubled racial and gender dynamics. Consider how the Super Bowl completely reshaped Janet Jackson’s career. Jackson had five No. 1 albums and was known as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, but less than three seconds in 2004 — so-called “Nipplegate,” when her bare breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake during the last moments of their performance — rewrote her entire history, plunging her into years of purgatory. It only briefly affected Timberlake’s, since he has the luxury of being white and male. (Remember, he returned to headline halftime in 2018.)

CONSIDINE Does making Jennifer Lopez and Shakira the halftime show headliners — a first for Latinas — feel like a transparent scramble by the N.F.L. to virtue-signal? To be more charitable, it makes sense that the league might simply want to pay tribute to the Hispanic heritage of this year’s host city, Miami. But wasn’t the N.F.L. probably compelled to do something a little extra after the outspoken way in which multiple artists last year turned down the opportunity in support of Colin Kaepernick? And after Rihanna did the same this season?

GANZ Sports and music are two arenas in which the stars are mostly young and black but work in a structure still largely controlled by older white men. The idea that some of the most powerful players in the music industry shunned halftime last year is a compelling one. (Maroon 5 agreed to perform and paid some sort of karmic tax.) This year is the first under the partnership between Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and the league, an attempt to smooth over tensions and bring a crumb of social-justice work to the game. And it’s interesting that this year’s headliners are both Latin pop stars, and neither black nor rappers. The halftime show hasn’t had a black headliner since Beyoncé in 2013; the closest it’s come to a hip-hop headliner is the Black Eyed Peas. If football fans are perceived to be so conservative they’d switch the channel rather than watch rappers, why hasn’t country music ever been very welcome at halftime? Its last appearance came 17 years ago with Shania Twain.

CONSIDINE The dearth of country music at halftime is interesting when you consider that the singer most associated with the N.F.L. in recent years has been Carrie Underwood — and before that, Hank Williams Jr. For that reason, I suspect that country music wouldn’t actually be unwelcome by most football fans at halftime. I’m also interested in a reverse question: Why has non-country music always been welcome?

My guess is that with the exception of one Trump-fueled moment in which some conservative fans skipped a game or two, the league knows it has that demographic locked down, no matter who performs at halftime. The billing, then, is a chance for the N.F.L. to snag some extra eyeballs, and pop is a surefire way to do it.

In racial or political terms, I’ll wager many of those fans who objected to Kaepernick’s knee-taking fancy themselves quite open-minded — or at least magnanimously indifferent — regarding the race or style of the performers, same as with the players. If I’m right, then the N.F.L. risks little in ignoring those fans’ musical preferences for 15 minutes. Intolerant people make low-stakes claims to tolerance all the time. But that tolerance reveals its limits when, say, a black man takes a knee.

MORRIS Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett and their fellow protesting players knelt for ideals that I, too, believe in. Pleas for justice and equality are controversial coming only from black athletes expected — hired — to run, throw, catch and dunk. But the culture has moved past the protests. Kaepernick still has a sports job of sorts. He works for Nike. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl remains this idyllic vestige of who we thought we were. It’s Americana that like lots of Americana is built on a cemetery of sorts. We flock to it as we do because it’s a spectatorship department store — sports, ads, music.

A lot of us remember the alleged simpler times when it was easier to pretend that entertainment was all it was. On one Sunday, we can pause Everything Else and just enjoy a miraculous helmet catch or a commercial for a job-finding company. It’s also a stable structure. We all know it. We know it will never change and therefore never challenge most people to confront more than their losing team. There’s no M.C. to be urbane or smug or real. Setting aside the violence at its center, it’s safe, a haven from so much. History in the making but also passionately ahistorical. Americana on the one hand, sure. But also just America.

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#Entertainment

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blockheadbrands · 6 years

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One Cannabis Support Group is Changing the Lives of Lady Veterans

Mekita Rivas of High Times Reports:

And it all started with one woman.

Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Lulu Gonzalez envisioned a life that often seemed out of reach.

“My neighborhood was really bad,” she tells High Times. “There was a lot of gang violence. I had seen some of my friends get killed, and that was something I wanted to stay out of. I didn’t want anything to do with it.”

After receiving a scholarship to attend a private school, she began focusing on her education and thinking about potential career paths. Then 9/11 happened. And at just 11-years-old, Gonzalez felt that the decision had already been made for her.

“I started hearing about enlisting in the military, and I remember thinking that this is something I wanted to do,” she explains. “I wanted to make a difference. There was this spark to be a part of something bigger.”

Although she initially thought about joining the U.S. Army, she opted to enlist in the National Guard in order to stay close to home. She would be able to attend classes at a local community college while still fulfilling the sense of patriotic duty that was so important to her. “I found that the California National Guard was going to offer me a way to serve my country, while at the same time I could have a life,” Gonzalez says. “That’s why I wanted to join.”

Her plan was to serve while studying to become a teacher.

“I wanted to help the kids in my neighborhood and show them that there was a different life out there,” she says. “I wanted to be an English major, to write books for kids, to inspire kids in my neighborhood in the way that I was never inspired.”

But just six months into her collegiate career, those dreams and aspirations were put on hold when, according to Gonzalez, she was sexually assaulted by her recruiter. While the assault didn’t take place on her college campus, the two had frequently met there. In the aftermath of the assault, Gonzalez says that even stepping foot on campus was a triggering and traumatic experience.

“It brings back bad memories.”

Gonzalez claims that she was also the victim of ongoing sexual harassment during her time as a technician in the National Guard. When she went to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs seeking mental health treatment, she says that since she wasn’t classified as active duty, she was told that she was ineligible for those benefits.

“I went to the VA to try to start that whole process of getting help, and I kept on getting rejected,” Gonzalez says. “So that really put me down. I was vulnerable—I needed a way to deal with it, and they kept on telling me no.”

In a recent poll of more than 1,000 service members, 66 percent of women said they had experienced sexual harassment or assault in the military. The poll, conducted by Smithsonian magazine in partnership with the Defense Department publication Stars and Stripes and the Schar School at George Mason University, found that six percent of men reported experiencing sexual discrimination, harassment, or assault.

Lulu Gonzales of Lady Veterans/ Facebook

According to data from the VA, suicide rates among women veterans skyrocketed to more than 45 percent between 2001 and 2015. The data suggests that women who have served in the military are almost twice as likely to kill themselves as civilian women.

“Certainly a mental health diagnosis like PTSD is a risk factor for suicide,” Megan McCarthy, VA deputy director of suicide prevention, told Voice of America. “There’s some evidence that experiencing MST (military sexual trauma) is associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors, so those that have experienced MST are more likely to think about suicide and possibly more likely to attempt suicide.”

That’s exactly what happened to Gonzalez.

“I didn’t see myself asking for help anymore,” she says. “The next thing that I decided to do was commit suicide. And that’s what caught the VA’s attention.”

She ended up going to the VA for overdosing on pills that she had taken from her husband without his knowledge.

“I don’t even know what pills he had,” she says. “I grabbed them, I shoved them, and I wrote a letter. And that’s it.”

She wound up in a VA hospital and realized that she had hit rock bottom.

“That changed my life,” Gonzalez explains. “That’s when I noticed that I needed help and that I couldn’t do it by myself. There were these problems I needed to talk about, but as a woman, I wasn’t being understood. I just needed empathy.”

So, after officially leaving the military at the end of 2016, she decided to create a safe space where that kind of empathy could exist and even flourish—not just for herself, but for all of the women veterans going through similar struggles. That’s when the Lady Veterans Project was born.

The group currently serves women veterans in three Southern California counties. Members are encouraged to attend therapy sessions and explore how cannabis can help them cope with the trauma they may have experienced during their time in the military.

“One of the things that we lose is our femininity,” Gonzalez says. “When I came out of the military, I had a really hard time dressing up and putting makeup on. Yes, it was partly because I was a victim of rape and I didn’t want to get any attention, but I was also used to using my brains to get things done and had blocked out that part of me.”

Through Lady Veterans Project, Gonzalez has created a community where these complex feelings can be talked about honestly and openly.

“I discuss these things with the women, and we all feel the same way,” she says. “We feel that we lost our identities as women, and we’re trying to figure out where we fit in with society. How do we find a place where we’re accepted for who we are? And that’s pretty much what we’ve become for ourselves.”

Considering the weight of the topics the women work through together—combat warfare, PTSD, and military sexual trauma—cannabis can help alleviate some of that heaviness.

“Women veterans are very alpha dominant,” Gonzalez explains. “I never thought that I was going to work with alpha women and have these really down-to-earth conversations. And I think that’s what we look forward to.”

Gonzalez, specifically, uses cannabis as an antidepressant to stabilize her moods and keep her energy levels in check.

“I’m very up and down,” she says. “I get triggered easily. Cannabis is a tool—it’s what gets you through the day. It’s what gets us to therapy, and it’s what gets us from therapy. It’s what gets us moving and helps us stay fit.”

Gonzalez says that some women used to turn to alcohol to cope with their trauma, but are now able to live more complete and present lives thanks to cannabis.

“They don’t want to be the way they were when they used to drink,” she explains. “Now they use cannabis to be able to interact with their kids in a healthy way and to be able to be fully there with their children—not just half there. Cannabis is a tool on their path of recovery.”

Looking to the future, Gonzalez hopes to grow Lady Veterans Project into a full-service nonprofit organization, complete with a 24/7 crisis hotline. She dreams of expanding the group’s reach and working with active duty servicewomen who may be currently experiencing hardships and trauma similar to what she went through.

Ultimately, she wants to show women veterans that they are not alone in their unique struggles and that, perhaps more importantly, there is hope for a better and brighter future.

“I want to make it inspiring and educational, and cannabis helps,” Gonzalez says. “A lot of the women have anxiety, and cannabis reduces our anxiety so that we can open up and really share without feeling judged. That’s the beauty of cannabis—we want to make sure that we’re holistically taking care of our complete selves, not just one part.”

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/women/one-cannabis-support-group-is-changing-the-lives-of-lady-veterans/

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lindyhunt · 6 years

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The 8 Essential Management Skills You Need to Lead a Successful Team

Last week, on the Fourth of July, I was feeling rather patriotic, so I decided to binge watch the HBO classic Band of Brothers. The critically acclaimed mini-series takes place in Europe during World War II, recounting Major Richard Winters’ leadership of Easy Company from a grueling boot camp to the invasion of Normandy and on to the end of the war. The series is a touching tribute to these brave soldiers, and in my humble opinion, it deserves all seven of the Emmys it won.

But if there’s one thing I’ll remember about this show, it’s a scene that’s only three minutes long: Major Winters orders an ambush on Axis soldiers who are resting in an embankment across a field from them. But before his soldiers can charge, he tosses a smoke grenade and bolts across the field alone. He wanted the Axis to target him before they could target his men.

Major Winters was willing to sacrifice his own life to preserve his company's, and his courage and selflessness remind military leaders everywhere that you should serve others before you serve yourself. If you lead a team at work, this scene will also resonate with you -- your job is to help your people succeed and achieve their goals.

But being a great leader isn’t something you can easily pick up and just start doing. Like any other skill, you have to work on it. So before you start channeling your inner Major Winters, here are eight management skills you need to learn to lead a team toward success.

The 8 Essential Management Skills You Need to Lead a Successful Team

1. You make your people feel safe at work.

Major Winters was an easy leader to follow because he always trekked into danger first, fought for his men, and did everything he could to protect them. He absorbed most of the risk so his men had a better chance of survival. And they respected and revered him for it.

Great leaders are always willing to protect their people, even if it means sacrificing their own interests, comfort, and a good metric or two. They want their people to feel safe at work. They want them to always know that they won’t get chewed out or lose their job if they fail. Their people know they can grow from these failures. And this results in a higher level of trust and cooperation.

When a leader risks and sacrifices herself to protect and improve her people, they’re willing to move mountains for her. Why? Because they know she’s already doing the same for them.

2. You can change your mind.

Even the smartest people get things wrong. But what seperates a good leader from a great one is the ability to admit that they’re wrong and change course in light of new information. Unfortunately, a lot of leaders won’t change their minds, even if it’s the right choice, because they don’t want to seem weak. Others have too much pride to admit that they’ve made a mistake. They’d rather pull rank and remind their subordinates that they’re in charge.

But admitting you were wrong requires a lot more strength than sticking to something that hurts your team or company, just because you've invested a lot of time and effort into it. For instance, Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, a company that provides open-source software products, decided to go to market without integrating a newly acquired product into one of their new technologies in 2008. He didn’t want to spend three months rewriting code and making it open source. But he soon discovered that he had made a huge mistake: Red Hat's associates and customers didn’t like using the product. And the only move the company could make was to rewrite the code. It would push them a year behind schedule.

The delay angered and frustrated his employees, and most of them thought Whitehurst wasn't competent enough to run the business. But instead of blaming the issue on external factors, Whitehurst blamed himself. He owned up to his mistake and told the company why he made his decision. They then understood the rationale behind his decision. Not long after, many of his employees told him how much they appreciated his honesty and that he changed his mind about their go-to-market strategy. And that’s what ultimately earned him back their trust and support.

3. You understand the importance of team bonding.

Sometimes, team outings can feel like a forced way to bond -- kind of like the annual Christmas get-together with your cousins growing up -- but after a slightly awkward beginning of the night, you’re having a great time. And by the end of the night, you don’t really want to go home.

Solving an escape room or participating in a scavenger hunt can contribute to this fun, but most of it stems from bonding with your team on a personal level and learning about each others’ personal stories.

Sharing stories and having positive social experiences is the best way for a leader to develop trust with their team. Both of these things trigger the release of oxytocin, the hormone that helps us empathize with people, and it prompts us to help, relate, and care about others in the same way we do for our families. In other words, it's the best way connect.

Having genuine conversations about what you and your team are passionate about, your lifestyle, and career motivations will break down barriers and build your team’s trust with each other and you, their leader. And this personal trust is what you need from your team to passionately support your overall mission and purpose.

4. You’re empathetic.

Every good leader should be able to be empathetic, right? Well, according to two Canadian neuroscientists, the higher you climb the corporate ladder, the harder it is to feel empathetic.

The part of your brain that triggers empathy is the mirror system. And whenever you see a person do something, it activates the thoughts and intentions that spark when you do the same exact thing. This helps you understand what motivates that person’s actions. But when you hold power over others, like in most leadership roles, the mirror system isn’t very stimulated, making it harder to place yourself inside other people’s shoes.

To stay on the same level as your team, consider trying a management technique called perspective-taking. If your colleague says something that frustrates you, take a step back and ask yourself why they took that position. How do they feel? Where is this perspective coming from? If you were in their role before, try to remember what it was like doing their job. Think back to your biggest fears and challenges. What made you feel threatened or insecure? Ultimately, perspective-taking will allow you to understand the root cause of your team’s problems and help solve for them.

5. You challenge your team.

During the 1988-89 NHL hockey season, Brett Hull led the St. Louis Blues with 41 goals scored. And after the season ended, he walked into his exit meeting with his head coach, Brian Sutter, expecting nothing but praise. But Coach Sutter didn’t give him any praise at all. In fact, he told Hull he needed to get better. Hull had the potential to be one of the greatest hockey players to ever live, but he could only be a Hall of Famer if he improved his work ethic. The next season, Hull arrived to St. Louis in the best shape of his life. And he almost doubled the number of goals he scored, with 72. The season after that he scored 86 goals. Hull was eventually inducted into the NHL Hall of Fame, and it’s all thanks to a coach who pushed him to train and perform at his best.

Like Brett Hull, everyone on your team can level up. Even your top performers. And to help them enhance their work ethic and skill set, push them to reach their potential and let them handle their own projects. They’ll be grateful for your guidance at the end of the day.

6. You don’t let your emotions influence your decision making.

Great leaders do what’s right, even if it causes a great deal of emotional pain. If they need to let someone go, even if they personally like them, they let them go. When they need to give constructive criticism to someone, even if they don’t want to hurt their feelings, they tell them what they need to improve on. The easy way out never pays off in the long term, and great leaders can blast through any anxiety or discomfort to do what’s best for their team.

7. You’re transparent.

Great leaders trust their people, especially with information. They know their team can sense problems in the organization. And since humans have a psychological bias that makes them more scared of ambiguity than risk, they make sure to provide as much information as possible about the issue and clearly communicate that they’re doing everything they can to resolve it.

Keeping things under wraps will only make their team feel anxious and unsafe -- if they know something’s wrong, and they know their leader hasn’t disclosed all the information, they’ll ruminate about the worst possible outcome. And this is likely to scare the leader’s team and make them lose trust in him.

8. You acknowledge and appreciate your top performers.

As a leader, you must know how to make your team feel valued. It’s one of the most important emotional needs to meet. If you don’t, your team will feel unhappy at work -- failing to recognize employees is one of the most common causes of employee dissatisfaction. To make them feel important to the team, happier, and incentivize them to keep improving, recognize and reward your employees for their accomplishments. You can does this in front of their peers, one on one, or even on Slack. This is also a way to inspire other members of your team to improve and earn recognition too.

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mystlnewsonline · 7 years

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New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/nick-foles-super-bowl-mvp-unlikely-folk-hero-philly/80374/

Nick Foles a Super Bowl MVP and unlikely folk hero in Philly

MINNEAPOLIS /February 4, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) — Cast aside once in Philadelphia, Nick Foles delivered the city its first Super Bowl title.

He outdueled the great Tom Brady to do it.

“Being a part of this and being drafted to Philadelphia, and being fortunate enough to come back and be a part of this team, to be a piece of this puzzle, I mean, it’s been a long time coming and I know there’s going to be a lot of celebrating tonight,” Foles said.

Foles, who took over when Carson Wentz injured his right knee in mid-December, matched Brady, the five-time champion and three-time MVP, big play for big play Sunday in leading the Eagles past the New England Patriots 41-33 .

After an unusually slow start, Brady led the favored Patriots to scores on five of six possessions, and Foles kept right on coming, executing coach Doug Pederson’s aggressive calls.

“I wasn’t worrying about the scoreboard, I wasn’t worrying about the time, I was just playing ball,” Foles said. “I think sometimes you start worrying about that too much, it starts creeping in your brain. I was just playing, whatever play Doug called, I was just going to go out there and rip it.”

After watching Brady put the Patriots ahead 33-32 with 9:22 left, Foles drove the Eagles 75 yards in 14 plays, hitting tight end Zach Ertz from 11 yards on third-and-7 for the go-ahead TD with 2:21 left.

That drive lasted a tick more than seven minutes and kept Brady cooling his cleats on the sideline while allowing the Eagles’ exhausted defenders to catch their collective breath in a game that featured 1,151 total yards, the most in any NFL game in the Super Bowl era.

That meant the world when Brady got the ball back and Brandon Graham swept in and jarred the ball loose for the game’s lone sack. Derek Barnett smothered it at the 31 with just over two minutes remaining, and Jake Elliott’s 46-yard field goal, the longest in a Super Bowl by a rookie, made it an eight-point cushion.

It also gave Brady just a minute to work his magic.

He started at his 9 with 58 seconds remaining and drove the Patriots to midfield before time ran out on New England as a desperation pass fell in the end zone.

Foles searched out Brady, but never did find him in all the chaos and confetti.

“I didn’t get to see Tom. I was looking for Tom. It got pretty crazy really fast,” Foles said. “I mean, he’s one of the greatest of all time. He’s been unbelievable. He was unbelievable tonight. I can’t say enough about him.”

Brady threw for more yards — a playoff career-high 505 to Foles’ 373 — but Foles matched Brady’s three touchdown tosses and even caught another .

He hauled in tight end Trey Burton’s toss from the 1 that gave Philadelphia a 22-12 halftime edge and made him the first player in Super Bowl history to be on both ends of a touchdown pass in the same game.

Brady nearly beat him to it.

Although wide open, the ambling Brady couldn’t quite haul in receiver Danny Amendola’s high pass for what would have been a nifty over-the-shoulder reception which might have gone all 35 yards for the score.

That brought to mind Gisele Bundchen’s famous dig after one of Brady’s two losses to Eli Manning and the Giants in the Super Bowl, when his supermodel wife responded to hecklers by complaining about the Patriots’ many dropped passes that day.

“You’ve to catch the ball when you’re supposed to catch the ball,” she fumed. “My husband cannot … throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.��

Nor could he haul in Amendola’s throw early in the second quarter with New England trailing 9-3.

Foles had never caught a pass in the NFL before his TD grab.

His only interception was a fluke, but it did help Brady and the Patriots staunch an early stumble to stay in it until the very end.

Foles was 28 of 43 and wasn’t sacked. Brady was 28 of 48, and while he didn’t throw any interceptions, his only sack was a doozy.

A third-round pick by former Eagles coach Andy Reid in 2012, Foles had tremendous success as a starter under Chip Kelly his sophomore season. He threw 29 TDs and two picks in 11 starts, including playoffs in 2013. Foles posted a passer rating of 119.2, third-highest in league history. He tied an NFL record with seven TD passes in a game at Oakland in November 2013 and won an offensive MVP award at a Pro Bowl.

But Foles was traded to St. Louis for Sam Bradford in March 2015. He lost his starting job to Case Keenum and asked for his release after Jared Goff was drafted No. 1 overall when the Rams relocated to Los Angeles. Foles even considered hanging up his cleats before Reid persuaded him to go to Kansas City to be Alex Smith’s backup.

“As people we deal with struggles and that was a moment in my life where I thought about it, I prayed about it,” Foles said of quitting. “And I’m grateful that I made a decision to come back and play.”

So is Philadelphia, where Foles returned after one season with the Chiefs, signing a two-year, $12 million deal to provide insurance behind Wentz.

Now he’s a folk hero for a franchise that had gone 0 for 2 in Super Bowls, and for a legion of fans who were rooting for anybody other than the Patriots.

“Just to be in this moment,” Foles said, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

___

By ARNIE STAPLETON, AP Pro Football Writer,By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

___

#folk hero in Philly #NFL before his TD grab #Nick Foles a Super Bowl MVP

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bewitchingallure · 7 years

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Suburbia, 9.18.17

I wonder if there’s a Home Owner’s Association policy against people that order too many tacky decorations from the Miles Kimble magazine. Surely, my sanity is worth an additional monthly fee, because I’m one patriotic wind chime away from blowing my brains out, all over her house of course. Unfortunately for her kids, they are too young to know the impression their mother’s distasteful enthusiasm made on the other parents and her new neighbours. Those kids are damn adorable though. They make her look admirable when they run off the bus into her arms, like they’ve been tortured all day at school. Can’t say I’ll ever get the pleasure of relating.

Feet tucked underneath me, I shifted around in the rocking chair out front, so I could skeptically watch Betsy more comfortably. I have a full cup of coffee’s worth of judgment left. We have a great house; bungalow meets craftsman with beautiful stained glass and woodwork all over, and a giant porch fit for five. After my advance for the new book went through, I finally put new furniture out here; it was such an eyesore before. Wicker furniture is so typical. Teak is classic.

Do you think she’s just living up to her potential, having been named Betsy anyway? How much could one aspire to with a name like that; it’s modest, hokey, and not too far reaching. Betsey is ill fitting and store brand in the world of women. While the contrast makes my house look better, I wonder as neighbours if Mark and I are tacky by association?

“Honey, I’m running late, can you let Henry out for me?”

He was fixing his tie, and I was giving him the once over like the first time I saw him from across the bar. Twelve years ago, I tripped like I had three feet, ran into the bathroom and told my girlfriends, “I’m going to marry that man out there.”

“Carrie, lets just wash the vodka out of your skirt first.”

To this day, I’ve never thought about giving my everything to anyone else.

“Sure babe, I’ll take care of the dog. I was about to come in and get ready before the vet anyway,” I said, standing up out of the chair to kiss that after-shave good day. I fixed the tie after his handsome attempt, gave him an umbrella for later, and saw him off.

“Henry! Does someone want to go out?”

He barreled down the stairs, probably having been rolling around in our bed. He wasn’t supposed to sleep up on the furniture, but he was our baby. Clamoring down, it’s like I could see fur flying off his coat in the warm morning sunlight. I let him out, slid the glass door shut, and lint rolled his usual spots like a daily ritual. When he finished covering up his droppings, like I couldn’t see them anymore, I leashed him and he fled to the passenger seat of my car.

I think vets become vets because they inherently prefer pets to all other humans; at least that’s what their greetings tell me. I’m not sure she says hello to me anymore, but Henry loves her, so be it. Today we were discussing when he’d be fit enough to breed.

“Were you going to find another long-haired Dalmatian, or a short coat? Long-haired are so rare, but recessive.”

Jackie, I’m aware. And just as last time, I want Henry matched up with another long-coat, because I want little puppies running around looking just like him. I’m not sure what makes her think I enjoy repeating myself. My phone rings. It’s Andrew, the degenerate nephew I’ve never been so happy to hear from. I reassure her that I’ll be right back before I step outside.

“Hey Aunt Carrie, I just woke up, got your text though. What’s up and how much are you paying?”

“Andrew, for two-hundred dollars, I need you to do two things: steal all of the decorations on my neighbors front lawn, then break into her garage and get the rest.”

Irritably listening to him laugh for a while, I heard in his drawn out amusement his thinking I’m being irrational.

“Do not tell your mother, she’ll kill me. But is that alright?”

“Yea, yea, that’s fine. Just hope this isn’t your neighbor Betsy, she’s the shit. Remember when -”

You have got to be fucking kidding me. I’d exhaust myself to sleep trying to rationalize why people like her.

“Just do it. Tomorrow night,” I said.

I shoved my phone back into my purse, and went back inside to correct Jackie yet again. Do I have to keep everyone in line?

#short story #writers on tumblr #suburbia #micro story

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jeroldlockettus · 7 years

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“How Much Brain Damage Do I Have?”

John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a Ph.D. in math at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly retired. (Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “‘How Much Brain Damage Do I Have?’” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly retired. Here’s the inside story — and a look at how we make decisions in the face of risk versus uncertainty.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

* * *

Andrew LO: Why is it the case that we have billionaires? Why should they exist?

The economist Andrew Lo is a finance professor at M.I.T.

LO: That’s a very strange concept for an economist because we usually think that markets are reasonably competitive. If it’s reasonably competitive, then no one person should be able to make billions and billions of dollars.

Hmh. That is an interesting idea, isn’t it? You could imagine market failures producing billionaires — like monopolies or cronyism. But yes — if markets are “reasonably competitive,” why do we have billionaires? Andrew Lo is not the first economist to consider this riddle. In fact, if you went back 100 years, an economist named Frank Knight had a notion …

LO: And he came up with that notion to try to explain the difference between ordinary businesses that would make a reasonable living versus these incredible captains of industry — the Andrew Mellons and, at that time, the incredible wealth that was generated by a relatively small number of entrepreneurs. These are people that, in today’s dollars, would be multi-billionaires.

Now, we all know the conventional wisdom — that the big rewards in life go to the people willing to take big risks, right? Frank Knight saw it a bit differently.

LO: He realized that the way you make a huge amount of money is not to take on risk. The reason is because risk, by its definition, is the kind of randomness that you can quantify. And if you can quantify it, so can everybody else. You can’t really outsmart other people because they can calculate just as well as you can.

So using probability and statistics, you can calculate risk. And because the odds of a given risk can be calculated, that risk can also be priced.

LO: Exactly. A good example is the insurance industry.

So risk is the stuff of actuarial tables. Taking on risk might make you a good living. But it wouldn’t have made you a multi-billionaire. To do that, Frank Knight argued, you had to take on something else entirely: uncertainty.

LO: For example, if you create an entirely new industry that didn’t exist before, there’s no way to calculate what the odds are. When Bill Gates started up Microsoft, we didn’t have a huge PC and software industry. He created that. He couldn’t sit down and calculate what the odds [were]. Knight came up with this idea that the way you really make money, the way innovation really occurs in the economy, is through taking on uncertainty, not taking on risk.

Okay, is that clear? Does the distinction between risk and uncertainty make sense to you? Maybe we could use an example …

LO: The difference was highlighted in a really neat experiment that was done in the 1960s by an economist by the name of Daniel Ellsberg. Most people remember Ellsberg not because of his economics, but because he was the fellow who released the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s.

NEWS CLIP:… detailing secret Washington events; events behind President Johnson’s decision to wage secret war against Vietnam in early …

NEWS CLIP:… Daniel Ellsberg, an M.I.T. senior research associate, surrendered to federal authorities in Boston …

NEWS CLIP:… to begin with, how did you get the papers?

NEWS CLIP: Well, I can’t discuss …

LO: But before he did that, he actually did some really pioneering work in economics. The experiment goes like this: imagine if I have an urn. In this urn, I’ve got 100 balls and 50 of the balls are colored red and 50 of them are colored black. And you and I are going to play a game where you pick a color, red or black. Don’t tell me what it is, but write it down on a piece of paper. Then I’m going to draw a ball out of this urn. If the color of the ball that I draw is the color you wrote down, I’m going to pay you $10,000.

And if it’s not, I’m going to pay you nothing.

Now the question is: how much would you be willing to pay to play that game?

LO: When most people think about the odds, they come up with an answer of about $5,000, because that’s the expected value. That’s the probability of getting the ball of your color multiplied by the odds of winning. That’s an example of risk. You know what the odds are.

But now …

LO: But now, suppose I change the game slightly and I have another urn. In this urn I’ve got 100 balls, but I’m not going to tell you what the proportion of red or black is. It could be 100 percent black. It could be 100 percent red or 50-50, 75-25 and so on. Now the question is, “If we play the exact same game, where you write down the color of your choice, and I pick a ball from this second urn, what would you pay to play this game with me?”

In this case, most people would pay much, much less than $5,000 …

LO: … much, much less than $5,000. This is an example of uncertainty. You don’t know the odds, and so therefore you’re much less likely to want to play.

And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between risk and uncertainty.

LO: The fact that risk allows us to make these inferences while uncertainty doesn’t means that from an evolutionary perspective our brains are going to start telling us “Red alert, stay away from an uncertain environment.” Because, from an evolutionary perspective, we actually need to know what’s out there. Because what you don’t know can kill you.

John URSCHEL: How much brain damage do I have?

Ann McKEE: The question is, “Would the risk be acceptable?”

URSCHEL: I don’t know. And it’s extremely hard to know.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: risk versus uncertainty in the real world — but a part of the real world that most of us will never get near.

URSCHEL in a previous Freakonomics Radio episode: In football, I just love running around and hitting people. It’s not a bad deal.

* * *

The National Football League begins its new season this week. Football is far more than just the biggest sport in America. It’s part of our calendar; part of our social fabric. Even during the off-season it makes big news. Among the three biggest stories this off-season: the New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, arguably the best quarterback in history, turned forty, and is still amazingly good. The quarterback Colin Kaerpernick, meanwhile, has no team — in part, it is suspected, because he has chosen to not stand during the national anthem; it’s Kaepernick’s protest against what he calls “a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” A third big story this summer: a Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman named John Urschel, entering the prime of his career, abruptly retired. At age 26.

URSCHEL: I told the Ravens, the Ravens announced it and then all of a sudden … This was a very naïve thing of me. I was really hoping to just go out quietly.

Stephen J. DUBNER: Really? [Laughs.]

URSCHEL: Nice and quiet, like a thief in the night. “No one pay attention to me. There’s no story here. There’s nothing going on.”

DUBNER: That is naive.

URSCHEL: On July 27, I had a lot of phone calls, certainly in the hundreds of phone calls and this was, frankly, a nightmare for me. I don’t really relish being the center of attention and I’m trending on Twitter. People are writing articles and people are making guesses as to my motivations.

Why did a relatively obscure player suddenly turn into such a big story? That’s pretty simple. He quit football just two days after the publication of a study that assembled the most compelling evidence to date on the relationship between football and brain damage. And: John Urschel has a particularly compelling brain. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in math from Penn State, where he also taught math while playing college football. He’s published papers in major journals — like “On the Maximal Error of Spectral Approximation of Graph Bisection,” which appeared in Linear and Multilinear Algebra. Also: he’s been working toward a Ph.D. in math at M.I.T.

URSCHEL: Yes. For the majority of my N.F.L. career, actually.

DUBNER: How did that work out? When did you do what, as a doctoral candidate, around the football season?

URSCHEL: Well, I was — I shouldn’t say “was.” I am a full time Ph.D. student at M.I.T. and I was full-time the entire time, so there wasn’t really any working around to be done.

DUBNER: But, obviously during the football season you’re not attending classes. That’s not possible right? Football’s [a] very full time job.

URSCHEL: Yes, of course. This is a natural question. I guess since I’m retired, I’m allowed to say, I was full-time, full-time. For example, last fall I took courses at M.I.T.

DUBNER: During football season.

URSCHEL: Yes. Via correspondence. I took courses which I thought were very manageable in season; areas that I was more or less familiar with previously, classes which had a textbook, which the professor followed the textbook and I would just do the assignments and then just send them in.

DUBNER: You say that you can tell me, “Now that you’re retired.” Am I to gather, then, that you didn’t tell the Ravens that you were actually full-time at M.I.T. during the football season?

URSCHEL: I did not tell anyone this. Well, except M.I.T. But I don’t think an N.F.L. team would be extremely happy to hear that I’m working towards my Ph.D. also in the fall.

DUBNER: How did a standard day work out?

URSCHEL: My schedule — to put the M.I.T. things in perspective — what I would do is, I would play the game on Sunday. Then from Sunday — suppose it’s a home game, one o’clock kickoff. I get home around 5:00, perhaps 5:30. From Sunday, 5:30 p.m. until Tuesday, say, 11:00 a.m. — when I have to go into the Ravens — all I am doing is M.I.T. coursework and math. That is all I am doing. M.I.T. accepted me as a Ph.D. student, but they don’t have part-time Ph.D. students. If I have to finish in four years, maybe five, this is just completely infeasible if I’m only working on the Ph.D. half a year.

DUBNER: Gotcha. You said that it would have been hard to do your coursework during the later part of the week. That’s because the intensity of the football week is building and you’re getting more in your brain in terms of game plans and the opponent and so on?

URSCHEL: Yes. Your focus is very much on your opponent. Wednesday and Thursday in the N.F.L. are full eight-hour, seven-to-four days, or eight-to-five days. You’re very tired at the end. You have to watch film of practice. You have to watch film of your opponent and even Friday, Saturday, you’re really preparing for the opponent. You’re really getting your mind right for those things.

DUBNER: Was the reason that you didn’t do work later in the week because you would have felt it was cheating your team, the Ravens, and maybe the fans and the league?

URSCHEL: Yes, of course. Very much so.

As we spoke, Urschel was planning to move from Baltimore to Boston, with his fiance.

URSCHEL: My fiance’s name is Louisa Thomas. She is a historical nonfiction author.

The two of them will soon be three.

URSCHEL: Yes. I’m expecting a baby girl. Her name is going to be Joanna.

We were speaking in August. In previous years, Urschel would have spent August training for the N.F.L. season, or — before that, the college or high-school football season. This time, he was on vacation, along with the rest of America.

URSCHEL: I actually didn’t even know that August was like the vacation month. This is news to me.

He and his fiance were in St. Louis for a chess vacation.

URSCHEL: Yes! Chess vacation.

Chess is a fairly new but serious passion of Urschel’s. St. Louis is the site of the Sinequefield Cup.

URSCHEL: It’s an elite chess tournament. It’s been very enjoyable for me.

He’s not nearly good enough yet to compete in this kind of tourney; he was there as a spectator.

URSCHEL: You can go up and watch them play. You can go into separate places and watch commentary. Certainly, you can grab a beer and chat with your friends about the game.

So John Urschel is just another 26-year-old, chess-spectating former N.F.L. lineman getting a Ph.D. in math at M.I.T. How did that happen?

URSCHEL: I grew up in Buffalo, New York with my mother. My father left when I was three, though I have a good relationship with him and he’s a good guy.

DUBNER: He was a surgeon, ultimately, yes?

URSCHEL: He was a thoracic surgeon. He was the chief of surgery at Harvard’s hospital in Boston, Beth Israel, before he retired.

DUBNER: He had played college football, I believe. Yes?

URSCHEL: That is correct. He played college ball at the University of Alberta initially, as an offensive lineman, and then he moved to linebacker.

DUBNER: Your mom, then, I understand, became a lawyer?

URSCHEL: Yes, that is correct.

DUBNER: What were you into and not into as a kid?

URSCHEL: As a kid I was very much into puzzles. Math puzzles, any puzzles really. I was quite into horror movies.

DUBNER: Now, what about sports as a kid?

URSCHEL: I believe when I was younger, my mom put me in indoor soccer. My mom was not quite in favor of me playing football. Actually, ever, now that I think about it. But my father was in favor of it.

In high school, Urschel was a good enough player and student to be recruited by, among others, Stanford, Princeton, and Cornell.

URSCHEL: I visit Cornell, and they show me the best time of my life. I almost commit to Cornell on the spot. Those familiar with football recruiting and how those things go … That works!

DUBNER: Can you give us some details on what was so great about this visit?

URSCHEL: Uh, no! [Laughs.] But it was a very —

DUBNER: Did it involve alcohol or other generally forbidden substances?

URSCHEL: [Pauses.] So as my story was going, it was a very enjoyable time. Tons of trips to church and Bible study. It was the best. One that I will never forget and I still have not forgotten. [Laughs.]

Urschel’s dream school — and one of his mom’s dream schools too — was Stanford. But after showing interest in Urschel, they disappeared.

URSCHEL: Penn State offers me, very late. I make a visit to Penn State. I commit on the spot. I just fell in love with the people and also it was my best option. I go home and the Monday after the weekend of my official visit to Penn State, who calls me? Jim Harbaugh.

Harbaugh was, at the time, the head coach at Stanford. He also happens to be the brother of John Harbaugh, who would become Urschel’s head coach in the N.F.L.

URSCHEL: And he says, “Listen, I’m so sorry we’ve dropped the ball on recruiting you. The person who was recruiting you quit suddenly.” They had to get things in order. He called me that Monday and offered me a scholarship on the spot and offered for me to fly out that weekend to go look at the school. I remember, because my mother was in the car with me, I had to tell him that, “I’m sorry. I just committed to Penn State this previous weekend.”

Penn State wasn’t expecting all that much from Urschel.

URSCHEL: I was the 26th out of 27 people they got for their class. I’m also undersized, I’m only about 265 at the time. I just put my head down and I worked hard. I worked hard in the weight room. I worked extremely hard to try to improve my technique as an offensive lineman. I always like to say that my math talent came fairly easily. My football talent very much less so. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of long hours.

Urschel had an outstanding college career, winning athletic and academic awards.

URSCHEL: Yes. It started to become apparent to me that I’d have a chance to play in the N.F.L.

DUBNER: Did you have any reservations? Was there ever a point where you said, “I’m thinking about a Ph.D. in math. You know what? I love football and I’m good at it but I’ll pass on that and just go straight into academia?”

URSCHEL: Didn’t even cross my mind. I was 100 percent pro-N.F.L. Just the dream of playing the sport I love at the highest level —this was a no-brainer. In hindsight, it would still be a no-brainer.

Urschel was not a superstar with the Ravens — but to be fair, very few offensive linemen are. They do the dirty work that most fans don’t pay attention to. But he had an absolute blast.

URSCHEL: The thing I really love about playing offensive line is it’s a very physical, visceral position. Every play I’m fighting with a defensive lineman or a linebacker, where they are trying to get through me to physically tackle someone and I am doing everything I can to stop them, whether in somewhat of a passive fashion or an extremely active one.

In his second year, during a pre-season practice, Urschel got a concussion.

URSCHEL: I believe I was playing left guard. I pulled right to trap out the defensive end or outside linebacker. I got a little bit more than I bargained for and I was knocked unconscious.

DUBNER: What was the treatment like for you, then?

URSCHEL: I walked off the field. Note that the Ravens did try to cart me off the field.

DUBNER: Okay.

URSCHEL: But I was being my stupid self. I walked off the field. They checked me for a concussion. They diagnosed me with a concussion and I was in concussion protocol for perhaps two weeks, I believe. I had some trouble passing this so-called “ImPACT test.” I just wasn’t quite feeling well, nor feeling myself.

DUBNER: What did you notice about your brain during this concussion-recovery period?

URSCHEL: It was tough for me to do high-level math. I really tried to. I really wanted to because there was actually a paper that I had been working on that I was really proud of because it was going to be my first, like big, solo-authored math paper. I just wanted to keep working on it to finish it. I really couldn’t because I had really hard times thinking through things and visualizing things. Thankfully I got the paper done and I was really happy to have it accepted. It all ended well. But at the time I was frustrated.

A few months before Urschel’s concussion, a promising young linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers named Chris Borland announced he was quitting the N.F.L. He was concerned about long-term brain damage. Urschel, who was friends with Borland, responded by writing an essay for The Players’ Tribune called “Why I Still Play Football.” “Playing a hitting position in the N.F.L.,” Urschel wrote, “can’t possibly help your long-term mental health. However, it’s also true that how bad such a pursuit is for you is something that, I believe, no one really knows for sure right now.”

LO: From an evolutionary perspective, we actually need to know what’s out there.

“With that said,” Urschel wrote, “Why take the risk?”

LO: Because what you don’t know can kill you.

“Objectively, I shouldn’t [take the risk],” Urschel went on. “I have a bright career ahead of me in mathematics. … But … I play because I love the game. I love hitting people.” Then, a few months later, Urschel got the concussion that left him unable to do high-level math.

DUBNER: Did you think about retiring or quitting football right then?

URSCHEL: Actually I didn’t. I didn’t actually think about it at all. I want[ed] to keep playing football. I loved the game and I was very much focused on being the best offensive lineman in the N.F.L. I could be.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: what finally changed John Urschel’s mind?

McKEE: It’s clear that there is a link and that there’s a problem in football. It’s not what any of us wanted to hear.

How did his head coach take the news that he was quitting?

URSCHEL: He even called me recently to check in on me and see how things are going at M.I.T.

And: how sympathetic has the N.F.L. been, historically, on the issue of brain health?

Alan SCHWARZ: As far as the N.F.L. goes, they’re bullies.

* * *

Even if you don’t follow football at all, you’ve likely heard that it has a huge problem.

SCHWARZ: It was really when guys started blowing their brains out and having their brain tissue examined for a degenerative brain disease — that’s when things started getting pretty icky.

That’s Alan Schwarz.

SCHWARZ: And I’m a journalist and author based in New York.

The brain disease is called C.T.E., or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

McKEE: It’s characterized by a deposition of a protein called tau, and that accumulates in nerve cells and other cells throughout the brain.

Ann McKee is a neuropathologist who directs the C.T.E. Center at Boston University School of Medicine.

McKEE: It starts as very focal problems or abnormalities, but then over the decades becomes a devastating neurological condition. It causes memory loss, cognitive changes, behavioral changes, like aggression, impulsivity, depression, and it can be very disabling with time.

Alan Schwarz wrote 130 articles for The New York Times about concussions or brain trauma in sports, primarily football.

SCHWARZ: There were two reasons why this blew up in football’s face, or in the N.F.L.’s face. One is players started dying and were found to have the brain disease. And then the the N.F.L. put up such a fuss saying, “Oh there’s nothing happening here, we have our scientists who have shown” — they played the perfect villain. We had something that resembled the tobacco industry.

Former players were dying young, sometimes by suicide. Older players were completely losing their faculties. And, occasionally, a current player would quit the game young, afraid of long-term brain damage.

SCHWARZ: As far as the N.F.L. goes, they’re bullies. They have been able to quash every public-relations problem in their history in the sense that — whether it’s domestic violence recently, whether it’s steroids, whether it’s the strikes and lockouts— there are games to be played on Sunday and everyone forgets by then. But this is one public-relations crisis that they have lost.

McKEE: Well, my feelings about the sport have definitely evolved.

The brain researcher Ann McKee again.

McKEE: I was born and raised right outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin. My brothers played football. In fact, I was an absolutely enormous Packer fan, and because I was raised in such a football-centric community, I have always had a terrific admiration for football players.

But then she began to study the brains of deceased players.

McKEE: At one point I could compartmentalize. I could still enjoy the games, I could watch them on Sunday on the television. But at this point I can no longer dissociate what I’m seeing under the microscope. After listening to hundreds and hundreds of stories of profound tragedy, I can’t look at the game anymore without imagining what might happen to some of those players.

One challenge in brain research is that a lot of it can only be done post-mortem.

McKEE: Being able to detect changes in the brains of living athletes, looking at structural changes after playing seasons, and also being able to detect C.T.E. is going to be absolutely a game-changer — pardon the pun — in research going forward.

But for now, researchers like McKee work with brains donated by the families of people who’ve died.

McKEE: I run a number of different brain banks. I have the Framingham Heart Study brain bank. We have the Alzheimer’s brain bank. We have an A.L.S. brain bank. We have P.T.S.D. We see that the incidence of C.T.E. in those other brain banks is extremely low. But then in this brain bank, where the criteria for inclusion was participation in football and that was the only criteria, we see a very high percentage of C.T.E. It’s impossible for me to dissociate the risk of playing football from the risk of C.T.E.

It’s been nearly 10 years since McKee began finding evidence of C.T.E. in the brains of deceased football players. Sometimes she’ll meet with family members after she’s done the analysis. The memory of one such visitor has stuck with her.

McKEE: Her father had died, and she came to the lab and wanted to look at the slides. She was an adult — she was 30s or 40s. I remember she looked at the brain. I explained it to her and she seemed fine with it. Then a bit later, I saw her really crouched in a corner and sobbing. I was wondering, “Why? Had I upset her? Had I [given]too much information with the brain autopsy?” It wasn’t that at all. She was so overwhelmed because she suddenly realized that her father had loved her; that his behavior of not remembering her birthday, not remembering details of her life, or seeming distant was actually part of his illness and not part of a dad who didn’t care.

SCHWARZ: Women are the heroes of all of this, in my opinion.

Alan Schwarz again.

SCHWARZ: They were the ones who really stuck up to the N.F.L. and stood up to the N.F.L. It was Sylvia Mackey, the wife of John Mackey who wrote to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to say that her husband had early dementia and she knew a lot of wives dealing with their husbands and former players and appealing to the N.F.L. to help, which started a charity for families. Linda Sanchez was the Congressperson most involved in all of this, and most caring. Gay Culverhouse, the former president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is the only N.F.L. executive to come out and speak out about the issue of brain trauma among former players — happens to be a woman.

Culverhouse is no longer the only such executive, but she was the first.

SCHWARZ: Dr. Ann McKee, the neuropathologist — these women are all football fans. They like football. They don’t want to destroy football, but they wanted to introduce some sanity, some realism about all of this and to demand from the over-testosteroned men who said, “Shut up.” And say, “You know what? I’m not going to shut up.”

Ann McKee’s latest study, co-authored with more than two dozen fellow researchers, was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in July. Just as John Urschel was getting ready to play his fourth season in the N.F.L.

URSCHEL: That is correct.

The fourth season, by the way, is typically the last season an N.F.L. player is bound by his rookie contract. Which can mean an even bigger payday the next year.

URSCHEL: Money just like showering, allegedly.

DUBNER: What did you see as your financial future within football?

URSCHEL: I don’t know … I didn’t really think about it that much. I don’t really spend money that much and I’m quite happy with my bank account. There’s nothing I really want to spend money on. I buy books, on occasion, like chess books, math books. That’s about it.

This new study was unprecedented in scope.

McKEE: This is the largest case series by far of American football players.

It included brains donated from 202 deceased former players, across all levels of the game; 111 of them had played in the N.F.L.

McKEE: And we did this very rigorous neuropathologic examination. We had defined criteria to make the diagnosis and we had a team of four neuropathologists who looked at the cases.

What did McKee and her colleagues find?

McKEE: And so, ultimately we found that, I believe, the overall was 87 percent of the football players in the series had C.T.E., and that included 99 percent of former N.F.L. players.

URSCHEL: Here’s my thing about this study — and this is something that bothers me — the big headline is like 99 percent of like N.F.L. brains they looked at had C.T.E. It was 99 percent, right?

DUBNER: Yeah, more than that — 110 out of 111.

URSCHEL: Yes. Especially to N.F.L. players that ask me my opinions about it, I said, “Listen. This number — do not like look at this like, ‘99 percent chance that I have C.T.E.’ because that is far from what this is saying.”

McKEE: Yeah. I don’t think we’re at the point where we can talk about a definitive risk estimate for an N.F.L. player. I do think the 99 percent — although we have said in every interview and we said it very clearly in that paper — that number became larger than life. But that wasn’t because of the authors of the scientific manuscript.

URSCHEL: Frankly, there is a strong case of self-selection bias there and that cannot be ignored.

DUBNER: In other words, the brains that are being donated to this bank were from families or players who suspected that they had C.T.E. or something close to that. Is that what you’re talking about?

URSCHEL: Yes. I can’t say that I know for certain that it’s self-selection bias. But my instincts tell me it’s extremely likely that it is.

McKEE: It’s not a general population of all people in the community or all football players in the community. If we had those population studies, I’m sure the risk would be lower. However, the question is, “Would the risk be acceptable?” In my opinion, this study says, “No, it would not be acceptable.”

DUBNER: I assume the timing of the study and your decision were not coincidental?

URSCHEL: No, I don’t think it was necessarily coincidental but I don’t think it was necessarily directly causal. The best, the easiest way I can explain it is that it was causal in one respect but not in the way that most people think it was. The way that it was causal is that it really reopened the dialogue within, talking to myself and also between myself and my fiance. It really opened a dialogue that I had not opened in an extremely long time.

DUBNER: Why was that? I mean, can I psychoanalyze you for one second?

URSCHEL: Yes, of course, feel free.

DUBNER: Is [it] because you loved playing football so much that even though the rational part of your brain — that maybe contained the mathematical abilities in your brain — you were able to override that or quiet it down so that you could keep doing what you wanted to do?

URSCHEL: Yes! That’s a good way to put it. This thing comes out and obviously it’s not 99 percent. Like it’s 99 percent in the study but it’s like, for me, is my chances 99 percent? I highly doubt it. Is it 0 percent? I highly doubt it. But it’s not 99 percent and the biggest thing it did was it made me say, “I should actually probably think about this again.” Not like, “This new evidence is extremely overwhelming [and changes] my opinion.” It’s more like, “This really brings something to my attention in a very real way that, quite frankly, I was more or less aware of but attempting to ignore to a degree.” In the back of my head, I had already been having these thoughts to some degree about my longevity and how long I wanted to play. The main thing that I thought about [was], “What was I most passionate about and what was I most excited about in life going forward?” When I thought about, “What are these one or two or three things?” Football, all of a sudden, was not one of these top two or three things. Football is actually actively hindering me from doing some of these things. Well, then it became a real conversation.

DUBNER: Was your fiance eager and ready for you to not only open this dialogue but to make the decision that you did?

URSCHEL: Yes. Quite ready.

DUBNER: What about your mom?

URSCHEL: Yes, she has been ready.

DUBNER: What about your dad?

URSCHEL: Not in favor. Yes. So what I did was I called John.

DUBNER: John Harbaugh, the coach.

URSCHEL: Yes.

DUBNER: Head coach.

URSCHEL: I thanked him and the Ravens, because quite frankly I thoroughly loved my time in the N.F.L., I loved my time with the Ravens. He expressed sentiments that he has the utmost respect for me. I stressed that these are mutual feelings. Yeah. John and I, we had a very positive conversation. He even called me recently to check in on me and see how things are going at M.I.T.

DUBNER: Were you concerned at all that your retiring would signal to the world that, “Holy cow, this is very startling and a very strong indictment.”

URSCHEL: Yes. This was actually a serious concern of mine. Because, yes I am retiring, I did retire. But at the same time, I love the N.F.L. I love football. I wouldn’t trade my experiences for the world. I do believe football is a great game. I didn’t want to be, for lack of a better word, I didn’t want to be perhaps fodder for certain anti-football establishments.

DUBNER: Do you think football survives long-term?

URSCHEL: Yes. Yes, of course.

SCHWARZ: I take no pleasure at all in the suggestion that I might have helped kill off football.

That, again, is Alan Schwarz, whose reporting in the New York Times highlighted the connection between football and brain damage.

SCHWARZ: I hope that football stays around and I’m very confident that it will.

DUBNER: Because why?

SCHWARZ: Because two things: N.F.L. owners are not in the business of having their $2 billion assets disappear. And the game will adapt. I’m not sure exactly how all this is going to play out, but the game — it’s a great game. It’s just played more recklessly than the market will allow.

McKEE: Because this affects a game we love, a game that defines communities, a game that is really the lifeblood for many colleges, there’s a lot of resistance to really addressing this problem in the way it should be addressed.

That’s Ann McKee.

McKEE: I just want people to be aware of this disease and I want individuals who decide to play football or continue to play football to be aware of it so that they can make as many individual changes to keep their head out of the game, to limit the amount of head impacts they experience, and make as an informed decision as they can regarding their own future.

And what is the N.F.L. doing? The league sent us a statement that read, in part, “The N.F.L. has made real strides to do everything it can to better protect players and make the game safer,” and it pointed to 47 rule changes since 2002. These include requiring more medical personnel to help diagnose head injuries; more careful treatment of players suspected of sustaining a concussion; and the prohibition of certain plays and procedures that have been deemed too risky.

McKEE: The responsible thing is to make some real changes in the game: limiting the amount of head contact, limiting practice, raising the age that children start to play football, maybe limiting playing career, and really addressing — with some strong research support — how to identify this disease in people while they’re still living and come up with treatments for it.

All that said, Ann McKee says it’s hard to know exactly what to do since the science on brain injury is still young. And since there are some surprising wrinkles — like the correlation, or lack thereof, between concussions and C.T.E.

McKEE: Repeatedly in our studies, we’ve looked at concussion and number of concussions. In none of the studies have concussions correlated with the development of C.T.E. We’ve had individuals with no reported concussions who have C.T.E., and we’ve had individuals with a number, high numbers of concussions, who don’t have C.T.E. But the one thing that seems to be holding up: it’s years of exposure to the sport and the length of playing career and the number of subconcussive hits. That is: the same impacts that lead to concussions in some people and symptoms don’t rise to the level of symptoms in others. It’s really the duration of the career — the cumulative number of what we call subconcussive hits — that seems to correlate best with the presence and severity of C.T.E.

There’s one more point about the brain — obvious, maybe, but often overlooked.

McKEE: The brain is just this marvel. It really controls our personality, our thoughts, our experiences, our emotion, even our reflexes, and our athleticism. Because that’s what the risk is here. It’s not like an arm or a knee. You’ll still be the same person even if you have difficulty moving or pain when you move. But the brain is actually your identity.

Especially if you’re the kind of person getting your Ph.D. in math at M.I.T..

URSCHEL: I’m interested in Voronoi diagrams, centroidal Voronoi tessellations, but also interested in other things. My advisor is this guy Michel Goemans, and he specializes in combinatorial optimization. I’ve been working on a lot of combinatorial optimization lately, and this is what I’ve been learning a lot about. I do have diverse interests.

DUBNER: I do want to hear what you think about the extent of any brain damage you may have done by playing all the football you’ve played.

URSCHEL: That’s a good question. How much brain damage do I have? I don’t know. And it’s extremely hard to know. While there are encouraging signs for me at the moment because I don’t have any problems currently — again, I don’t know. And I don’t know how much of an effect having played football will have on my experiences later in life. To know with certainty is a very hard thing in this area, I believe.

John Urschel always knew that playing football involved risks — as does just about anything in life. But: when risk tipped into uncertainty — well, that seems to have been his tipping point.

LO: From my own perspective I think it’s wise because doing mathematics could provide a lifetime of pleasure and success, whereas being a very successful football player can provide you with 5 to 10, maybe 15 years of success.

That, again, is Andrew Lo, who teaches finance at M.I.T. Maybe he and Urschel can be friends!

LO: If you don’t know what the odds are, you really have to say, “It’s probably not something that I’m comfortable doing.” He’s making a very human decision because we don’t know what the odds are, the potential loss both for him and for the community. It could be incredible. I mean imagine if Albert Einstein ended up being a linebacker for his football team, and we never would have gotten the theory of relativity because he got tackled during a particularly nasty game. If you don’t know what you’re giving up, if you don’t know what the odds are, it’s actually very easy to say, “You know what? I don’t think I want to play.”

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: we’re talking about talking:

John McWHORTER: I find it fascinating that there are seven thousand different ways to do what we’re doing right now.

We talk about how talking began:

McWHORTER: There are many theories as to why people started using language, and some of them are ones where you want it to be true because it’s cool.

And: if we could start over, what would that look like?

McWHORTER: The truth is that if we could start again, I don’t think anybody would wish that the situation was the way it came out.

We return to our Earth 2.0 series with a look at our modern-day Tower of Babel. That’s next time …

Maria Luisa MACIEIRA: Isso vem no próximo episódio.

Oleg IVANOV: Это будет в следующем выпуске.

Dayana MUSTAK: Episod seterusnya dalam Radio Freakonomics.

Justin CHOW: 在下一集

Anisa SILVA: Yang akan datang selanjutnya.

Rendell de KORT: Esey ta sigi proximo.

… on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Stephanie Tam with help from Eliza Lambert. Please don’t take our fair treatment of John Urschel and the Baltimore Ravens as any sort of endorsement of the Ravens; Freakonomics Radio is firmly a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Greg Rosalsky, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins and Brian Gutierrez; the music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Andy Lanset, New York Public Radio’s Director of Archives. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at [email protected].

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Andrew Lo, professor of finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ann McKee, professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University.

Alan Schwarz, journalist.

John Urschel, Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at M.I.T. and former lineman for the Baltimore Ravens.

RESOURCES

“111 N.F.L. Brains. All But One Had C.T.E.,” Joe Ward, Josh Williams and Sam Manchester, The New York Times (July 25, 2017).

“Advances and Gaps in Understanding Chronic Traumatic Encephalophy: From Pugilists to American Football Players,” Gil Rabinovici (2017).

“Clinicopathological Evaluation of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Players of American Football,” Robert Cantu, Lee Goldstein, Douglas Katz, Robert Stern, Thor Stein, Ann McKee et al (2017).

“Long-term Consequences of Repetitive Brain Trauma: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy,” Robert Stern, David Riley, Daniel Daneshvar, Christopher Nowinski, Robert Cantu, Ann McKee (2011).

“Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Risk Factor for Neurodegeneration,” Brandon Gavett, Robert Stern, Robert Cantu, Christopher Nowinski and Ann McKee (2010).

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit by Frank Knight (Martino Fine Books, 1921).

“Why I Still Play Football,” John Urschel, The Player’s Tribune (March 18, 2015).

ETC.

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew Lo (Princeton University Press, 2017).

“An Egghead’s Guide to the Super Bowl,” Freakonomics Radio (February 2, 2017).

“On the Maximal Error of Spectral Approximation of Graph Bisection,” John Urschel and Ludmil Zikatanov (2015).

The post “How Much Brain Damage Do I Have?” appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/brain-damage/

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