Link Roundup: Emotional Labor, Culture Wars, and Avatar

In cleaning out my bookmarks folders (something that I occasionally do in order to prune out all the dead links) I happened upon several things that I had been meaning to actually do a blog post on, but life intervened and for one reason or another, it never happened.

Given that 2019 is my year for kindness (radical, reckless kindness for both others and myself) and acknowledging that my life is no less crazy than it was back then, so the likelihood of each of these getting said blog post is slim to none. I resolved instead to put them some of them here as a kind of link roundup ( to put all of them would make this post long in all the bad ways so I’m breaking them up into chunks).

Women Aren’t Nags – We’re Just Fed Up – a piece on emotional labor and how it’s still something that a lot of guys just don’t understand.

Hunger Makes Me   – this piece threw me for a loop when I first read it. My emotional response to it was overwhelming and complicated. Overall, it was an excellent piece. CW: does lightly reference eating disorders and dieting.

How to win a culture war and lose a generation – an older article, but no less relevant or salient for the passing of time. Followed up by From Waging War to Washing Feet: How do we move forward? – both of these articles are written by the same person, Rachel Held Evans, and both of them are very good, especially given the day and age we are in, and the clashes between the generations.

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’ – an intriguing look at Avatar and the problems inherit with that film and others like it.

Attacking Avatar – another look at breaking down Avatar and why exactly it left you unsatisfied after viewing it.

A Response To The Anti-Diversity Screed Leaked Today

https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-d…

So this went viral today and I want to encourage every white male I know seeing this to go ahead and read it. Because this is one of you. This is one of your peers.

The document is well put together, sounds calm and reasonable, uses bullet points and proper grammar. It is also tearing away at the humanity of women and non white men. Someone who looks just like you, who jokes around at the watercooler/coffeepot, who is one of the “generally good guys” felt comfortable enough to write this 10 page document and actually post it on the internet.

It is important for you to understand that this man? This educated engineer who wrote this steaming pile of absolute garbage? He is NOT an anomaly. He is part of the status quo and has been for a while. He’s not going to stop or pay any attention to any of the women who have responded to this document. We don’t matter.

The document made the news and has been circulating around everywhere and yet not once have I seen any article name the man that wrote it. The press had the courage to publish his screed that claims that women are biologically inferior to men, but not the courage to name him. If that claim sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been used for centuries to discredit anyone different who might present a challenge to the default white male status quo.

This is the kind of power that men like him have.

But how you respond to it will be important. Men like him are dime a dozen. Silence will be treated as tacit approval of these viewpoints. It’s rough to speak up – there will push back and I know the societal pressure will be to keep quiet. To not rock the boat.

This boat, however, needs to be rocked. Women and POC’s have been confronting things like this on a daily basis. So my question to you is will you stand up with us?