Fox News Brings on Santa Claus to Discuss the "War on Christmas."
Sounds about right.
Headline of the Day
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Gun violence; misogyny; disablism.]
Charlotte Allen in the conservative outlet the National Review Online: Newtown Answers.
It's a solid treatise full of super-smart ideas about how the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School wouldn't have happened without all the stupid feminism and the resulting lack of men in the school.
I could literally spend the next three hours, maybe more, of my life, responding in infinitesimal detail to everything wrong with that piece of shit article. But instead, I'm just going to respond to this line:
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred.Yes there was. The shooter.
Have at it in comments.
[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]
Before We Start Arming Teachers, A Thought
[Content Note: Guns; abuse.]
Not all teachers are nice to their students.
I make that observation as the daughter of two public school teachers who were very kind to and very beloved by their students—and who did not like the teachers who weren't kind to their students.
I make that observation also as the friend of multiple public school teachers. Two of my best friends from high school are now public high school teachers themselves. My oldest friend, A, who I have literally known since the first day of kindergarten, is a public high school teacher. My godfather is a retired public school teacher. I keep in contact with some of my favorite public school teachers.
And I make that observation as the friend and colleague of many educators in traditional academic roles and nontraditional educator positions.
I know a lot of great teachers. They are all very kind to and very beloved by their students. And they, too, do not like the teachers who aren't kind to their students.
Most schools have one or two—or more, depending on the size of the staff. I went to a high school with 3,000+ students and my graduating class was nearly 700 in number. The school employed hundreds of teachers, and some of them were actively unkind to their students. They had reputations among the students, and among the other teachers.
Every teacher who is kind to their students is pretty contemptuous of the ones who aren't. If you are a teacher or grew up around teachers, the question, "Why is X even in teaching when they seem to hate kids?!" is not an unfamiliar question.
Because some teachers are bullies.
There are teachers who form cliques with some students while marginalizing others. There are teachers who make fun of students in front of the class. There are teachers who negatively fixate on certain students for reasons only they know. There are teachers who physically hurt and/or sexually exploit some of their students.
They are a minority.
But if we're talking about putting guns in the hands of public school teachers, this minority of teachers—and administrators—who do abuse their students needs to be part of that conversation.
Do we want those teachers having guns?
It's easy to say, "Well, those teachers shouldn't be teaching in the first place," but that's not practical. Abusive teachers can stay in the profession for entire careers—and, despite conservative tropes, it's not just down to a powerful teachers' union who protects every teacher, no matter how shitty. It's because, like virtually everywhere else in the country, abuse is underreported, privilege is privileged, and the victim-blaming narratives of an entire culture of abuse serve as the backdrop for "dealing with" students and parents who report mistreatment.
Arming teachers will only entrench that dynamic.
You see, it's not that I imagine even the bulliest of teachers is likely to use a gun on a student in a fit of pique. (Although, yeah, that could happen, too.) It's that there's already a huge power imbalance that discourages students from reporting teachers for abusive behaviors.
Now imagine if that abusive teacher has a gun.
Teachers need to have authority to do their jobs effectively, but they should not hold so much power over students that they are able to abuse them with impunity. Students should be empowered to advocate for their own safety without fear of reprisal—and adding deadly weaponry to what is already an institutional power differential further complicated by age and experience, if not additional privileges like gender and race, is robbing students further of what little control they have.
If we're genuinely interested in protecting students from terror and harm, arming teachers isn't the way to do it.
[I have made this point in comments and on Twitter, but I thought it deserved a post of its own. Also see Aphra's excellent piece, I'm a Professor, Not a SWAT Team Member, which is another crucial piece of this conversation.]
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five Things You Love About Where You Live. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
Top Insult
Is anyone else watching this season of Top Chef? Oof, it's so bad. In one episode, judge and show producer Chef Tom Colicchio yelled at all the contestants and told them there would be no winner, because all of their dishes were so terrible. Yikes.
Last night's episode was definitely the best of the season, because the only female winner of Top Chef (so far, as she was quick to observe), Stephanie Izard, returned as a guest judge, but also because returning d-bag cheftestant Stefan:
This guy ^
—served up one of the greatest insults I have ever heard, sneeringly describing another cheftestant's soup as so awful "I wouldn't flush my poop with it."
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!
That was almost—almost—worth having watched this garbage season.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker RedPandamonium: What is something that you would never do in a gazillion years? And I'm going to add the qualifier that we're talking about positive things people do for pleasurable self-fulfillment, not vile things people do to harm.
(I realize those aren't precisely distinct categories in all things, but you get the drift.)
So what would you never do? Skydiving, bungee jumping, scrap-booking, parenting? Do tell!
This is a real thing in the world.
[Content Note: Guns; patriarchal violence.]
Above: An image of the "Man Card" issued by Bushmaster, the maker of the semi-automatic assault rifle used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown School Shooting, issued to customers who complete a manhood quiz featuring questions like: "Do you eat tofu" and "Have you ever watched figure skating on purpose?"
At least, those were the questions until Bushmaster pulled down the page.
Which may be because the other questions, per Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon, were utterly vile:
One question gives you four possible options of how to respond if a car full of the rival team's fans cuts you off on the way to the championship game. The correct answer, it turns out, is to commit arson: "Skip the game, find the other car in the parking lot, and render it unrecognizable with a conflagration of shoe polish and empty food containers."And, as if my points about a culture a violent masculinity and an entrained lack of empathy needed to be made any more clearly:
Don't let those emotions show or that glass be full of anything but non-light beer, because your buddies can "revoke" your Man Card at any point. Revokable offenses include being a "crybaby," a "coward," a "cupcake" (we have no idea what that means either), having a "short leash" (presumably thanks to a wife or girlfriend), or being just generally "unmanly" (this one has a woman icon).Ha ha ha. Adam Lanza killed seven women, starting with his own mother.
There are people who sneered when I observed that Lanza had committed the "ultimate patriarchal act," but here it is, in stark relief, that women are anathema to Real Men, according to patriarchs.
The New Book Shelf
by Shaker Teaspoon
Howdy, Shakers! Some of you might remember that I work at a law school library, and while most of what I deal with are books written by lawyers for lawyers and law students, every now and then we get a big batch of recent general treatises on the legal aspects of social justice topics. We received just such a shipment last week, and Liss has graciously agreed to allow me to share a list of recent social justice releases with you that may be of interest.
[Content Note: War, guns/gun control, addiction, food insecurity, criminalization of abortion, obstacles to marriage equality, climate change. Please note that I have only skimmed these materials as part of processing them, so I cannot offer detailed content notes for each book.]
Tapping into The Wire: The Real Urban Crisis. Peter L. Beilenson and Patrick A. McGuire. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-4214-0750-0. This book examines the television show The Wire through a progressive lens, from drug addiction and related violence as a public health issue, through poverty as a cause of poor health, to the link between malnutrition and obesity in food deserts.
Marriage at the Crossroads: Law, Policy, and the Brave New World of Twenty-First-Century Families. Marsha Garrison & Elizabeth Scott. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-107-01827-3. Garrison and Scott edit a compilation of discussions on the sociology of marriage and families, examining such topics as gender disparity and family diversity.
From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. Michael J. Klarman. 2013. ISBN: 978-0-19-992210-9. Klarman begins with a historical summary of the persecution of gay people and the gay rights movement from the 1950s to the present before examining the sources of backlash and finally looking forward to the "inevitability" of same-sex marriage. If anyone has been looking for a thorough timeline, this book might be the one. Note: While the events and policies discussed in this book have impacted and will continue to directly impact people who do not identify as gay or straight, the book is not inclusive of other groups and keeps a very narrow focus.
Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Adam Winkler. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-393-07741-4. Winkler discusses the ongoing debate around gun rights and gun regulation over the last century, and discusses the way that the NRA has changed from an organization that promoted regulation into one that promotes widespread deregulation. This book goes a little overboard with the "both sides are extreme" rhetoric, but there is solid information here, so it could be of use to those getting involved in gun reform advocacy and/or just hoping to better frame their arguments on social media in the face of recent tragedies.
Beyond Just War: A Virtue Ethics Approach. David K. Chan. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-137-26340-7. Chan deconstructs the "just war" theory and promotes a theory of co-existence, stopping short of pacifism.
Re-Member: Rehabilitation, Reintegration and Reconciliation of War-Affected Children. Ilse Derluyn, Cindy Mels, Stephan Parmentier and Wouter Vandenhole. 2012. ISBN: 978-94-000-0027-8. This book examines the effects of war on children all over the world, and discusses the social programs and services necessary to help them recover their lives and livelihoods.
NGOs, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere. Sabine Lang. 2013. ISBN: 978-1-107-02499-1. Lang makes a very in-depth look at Non-Governmental Organizations, their role in public discourse and policy development, their successes and their shortcomings. A good read for those interested in the way community organizing works and doesn't.
Civic Fusion: Mediating Polarized Public Disputes. Susan L. Podziba. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-61438-710-7. Podziba shares her experiences as a public policy debate moderator and discusses the process that goes into her work. [Content note: Discussion of abortion debate.]
The Criminalization of Abortion in the West: Its Origins in Medieval Law. Wolfgang P. Muller. 2012. ISBN: 978-0-8014-5089-1. Muller traces the idea that an abortion should be anyone's business but the pregnant person's to the 12th century, and then discusses the evolution of the concept in the following several centuries.
The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court. Jeffrey Toobin. 2012. ISBN: 978-0-385-52720-0. Toobin begins with Obama taking the Oath of Office in 2009 and examines the President's interactions with the Supreme Court, both cases and appointments.
The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright. Hector Postigo. 2012. ISBN: 978-0-262-01795-4. Postigo takes a look at digital copyright, the people who have found ways around it, and the decisions by various media companies that helped create a volatile situation.
The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More. Stephen Fishman. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-4133-1721-3. Put out by NOLO, this book is less about a social justice topic and more included here for the benefit of those Shakers who might have an interest in making sure they aren't stepping on others' intellectual property rights.
[Note from Liss: Please feel welcome and encouraged to share your reviews, positive or negative, of any of these books that you've read in comments. Also feel welcome to make related recommendations.]
Today in Gun Reform (or the Lack Thereof)
ABC News: President Obama Launches Gun-Violence Task Force. When a problem is too complex and/or the best solution is the most unpopular one, launch a task force! At least VP Joe Biden is leading it, as Aphra mentioned, which means it might actually propose some genuinely meaningful reforms.
New York Times: Obama to Give Congress Plan on Gun Control Within Weeks. Meanwhile: "The president's pledge came as House Republicans restated their firm opposition to enacting any new limits on firearms or ammunition." Of course. Because they are assholes.
CNN: NRA Breaks Silence After Shootings; May Now Offer 'Meaningful Contributions'.
The National Rifle Association, with roughly 4.3 million members, deactivated its Facebook page, had stopped tweeting on its Twitter account and had been issuing a "no comment" to any media outlet, including CNN, seeking a response.I just can't even.
But late Tuesday, the group broke that silence with a statement:
"The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters -- and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown. Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting. The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again," the group said. It plans to hold "a major news conference" on Friday and both their Facebook and Twitter presences are active again.
But despite the relative radio silence early on from the powerful lobbying group's offices in Fairfax, Virginia, the organization is regrouping in anticipation of a massive legislative push to introduce or, in some cases, reintroduce gun control legislation, say former NRA officers and gun policy experts.
The Hill: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) Urges People to Turn in Their Guns. I saw MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor, who is a trauma survivor and former Marine, say that she was going to turn in her gun after the shooting. It was a very powerful segment. I find it interesting (which is a simple word that I'm using to encapsulate what could be an entire post on its own) that in the wake of another mass shooting by a white man, it is black women urging people to turn in their guns and volunteering to turn in their own.
Bloomberg: American Gun Deaths to Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 2015. Welp, maybe we should regulate licensing to operate and ownership of guns at least as seriously as we do licensing to operate and ownership of cars. Just a thought!
I'm a Professor, Not a SWAT Team Member
[Content Note: Guns.]
I'm a professor of history. What does that mean? It means that I attended graduate school and learned not only about the current scholarship in my field, but also the skills necessary to produce scholarship of my own. I proved this by writing a doctoral dissertation. Today, my job is divided in three: teaching, research, and service (which means things like sitting on committees to run my department, my college, and my university).
What my training and job do not include is detecting and neutralizing armed threats. Not only do I not have that training, I also don't have regular reinforcement of that (non-existent) training, nor the kind of equipment to carry it out.
It's not that I can't fire guns. Admittedly, it's been a long while since I've done so, and I definitely need practice. And it's not that I don't have "military training." I served in the Navy.
But those things--being able to fire a gun, having some long-ago basic weapons training--those things are not what is necessary to respond to an armed assailant in a crowded school.
Unlike the jackasses in Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia, who apparently think that any old person can do what a SWAT team does, I actually have respect for law enforcement. I understand that it takes a lot of training, and a particular set of aptitudes, in order to do that kind of work. I understand that what they do is not a matter of attending a training session or two. I also understand that they get paid to be alert to danger, and to proactively respond to it. That's their job, and I respect that. I even understand that not all law enforcement and security forces have the same training, that some are very specially trained to handle things like hostage situations or gunmen who threaten large crowds.
But that is not my job. My job involves things like palaeography and reading microfilm, or grading papers, or going to yet another meeting about campus recycling. Nor is it the job of teachers at the elementary and secondary level.Their jobs are focused more on teaching and service than mine, and their training is a little different from mine--they take classes on their subject area and on the actual craft of educating, rather than focusing on how to produce scholarship. But you know what they don't take classes on? How to take down an armed gunman without shooting innocent civilians. At least, they don't teach that at my university's College of Education.
There are people who are willing to, as a profession, put their lives on the line to protect others. I have enormous respect for that. I appreciate the police force that helps keep my campus safe, and I try to communicate to them that I respect all that they do. So, conservatives, please: stop proposing these ridiculous laws that suggest I could do their job. I can't. For people who claim to respect law enforcement, you sure have a funny way of showing it.
Quote of the Day
"You know, I'm an indecisive person. I'm terrible to go to a restaurant with—I can spend 10 minutes deciding on what to eat, what to drink. When I met Deb, I don't know what it was—it wasn't me. It was the clearest thing in the world for me. I knew one hundred percent. …I've never known anything as confidently or sure in my life that she was the one I was meant to be with. And I think, for me, that's one of the great blessings, because, in any relationship, in any marriage, there's good times, bad times, hard times, and great times—and it's just always in here [touches chest]: Whatever happens to Deb and I, whatever comes across our path, I know we're going to tackle it together. And truly she's the greatest woman I have ever met."—Hugh Jackman, talking about his wife of 16 years, actress Deborra-Lee Furness.
Just in case you needed another reason to love Hugh Jackman.
[The quote begins at 2:20 in video viewable here.]
In The News
[Content nore: Guns, gun violence]
Wednesday News:
Park Geun-hye was elected president of South Korea. She is the first woman elected president in that country.
Conservative pundits now believe Hillary Clinton is lying about her concussion to avoid having to testify about Benghazi. What a bunch of geniuses.
Frost flowers! Awesome. Totally awesome.
Keep up the good work, Huffington Post! Tell us more about celebrity colons!
Robert Bork has died.
Gift ideas: Atlas Shrugged tie! John Galt tie!
NASA has released a new image of Saturn's dark side shot by its Cassini spacecraft. Neat!
President Barack Obama and top Dems are at odds over the growth of Social Security benefits. Whoops!
The Discovery Channel has cancelled Ted Nugent's Gun Country. Also gone: American Guns.
A sixth grade boy brought a gun to school, he says on his parents' direction so he could protect himself after the Newtown shooting.
Chuck Hagel is not the right choice for defense secretary. Obviously.
The Times of Harvey Milk is among the 25 films selected for preservation by the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
Florida's "stand your ground" law leads to a shooting at Little Caesars over a complaint about slow service. Good lord, this law.
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen.]
President Barack Obama pretends to be caught in Spider-Man's web as he greets the son of a White House staffer in the Outer Oval Office, Oct. 26, 2012. [Pete Souza/The White House][Via.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This roundup brought to you by the end of the semester.
Newtown-Related Reading:[content notes for guns, violence, death for this entire section]
Mark: Newtown Shootings: Funerals Continue; Biden To Lead Task Force. [content note: gun apologia]
Christina: Newtown Notebook: When the Funeral Processions Drive By.
Adam: Newt Gingrich Blames ‘Anti Religious’ Secular Government For Newtown Shooting. [content note: Christian supremacy]
Jim: In Sermons, Episcopal Leaders in Washington Call for Gun Control.
Matt: Ailes Mouthpiece Hints At Support For Stronger Gun Violence Laws.
Other Recommended Reading:
Alex: Naughty Dog Wants to Make (More) Interesting Female Characters.[content note: sexism in videogaming]
Hemant: The Orleans Parish School Board in Louisiana Just Voted to Ban Creationism from Their Schools. [content note: Christian supremacy]
Rachel: We Heart Hasbro For Responding to Gender Criticism. [content note: gender stereotyping]
Arturo: Video: Franchesca Ramsey’s Powerful ‘How Slut Shaming Becomes Victim Blaming.’ [content note: rape, slut shaming, rape culture]
Jill: DC Comics’ Gail Simone Has Been Removed As The Writer Of Batgirl. [content note: sexism, trans*phobia]
Deborah: The Winter Solstice As Seen From Stonehenge.
Peter: Statue of Freedom Gets New Bonnet, 1911.
Joseph: The Scientific Reason Reindeer Really Do Have Red Noses.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Time's Person of the Year: Another Dude
Time's 2012 Person of the Year is President Barack Obama. That is a very weird picture to choose. Also: It is his second time being Time's Person of Year; he was their choice in 2008, too. Which I think makes him only the second person of color to be chosen twice (Deng Xiaoping was featured twice).
Congratulations to President Barack Obama, whom I'm sure couldn't care less. I mean, would you care? They picked George W. Bush twice, so.
Anyway. Since Time is recycling their Person of the Year, I'm going to recycle part of my post from 2010:
Time has not selected an individual woman as its "X of the Year" since then-president of the Philippines Corazon Aquino was named Woman of the Year in 1986. In 1999, Time changed the annual year-end honorific, which had almost exclusively been a "Man of the Year" since its inception, to "Person of the Year," but it merely created an illusion of parity. Still no individual women.Oh well, ladies. I guess if we want to see ourselves represented on the cover of Time's Person of the Year issue, one of us had better get busy getting reelected to the US presidency! Good thing being marginalized by the media doesn't make that EVEN HARDER!
This year, no different.
..."Person of the Year," my ass. If Time doesn't believe there's been a single individual woman deserving of the title in2426 years, then the least they could do is be honest and go back to calling it what it really is: "Man of the Year."
Because the message being sent by having not found a single woman deserving of the cover in longer than a girl child could be born, attend grammar school and junior high, graduate from high school, graduate from college, get her Master's degree, and settle in at her first job, is not that she could be their "Person of the Year" someday.
It's that she shouldn't waste a dime of her 79-cent-on-the-dollar salary on their garbage magazine.
[See also: Kate, last year.]
Epic Win
by Shaker BrianWS, who may or may not become a full-time contributor someday, depending on how that whole Mayan doomsday prophecy thing turns out.
As I continue to learn and continue to grow up, I keep finding things in my life that speak truth to the point that the patriarchy isn't just an enemy of women, but a true enemy of men, too.
When I was younger, playing goalie in soccer was my life. I started playing at the age of 5, and around the age of 11, I began to play more competitively, and that meant that between the ages of 11 and 18, I would play soccer anywhere from 4-6 days a week, 52 weeks a year, between travel club teams and eventually my high school team during their season.
I always loved soccer, and, more importantly, I loved what it meant about my relationship with my dad. I didn't have many positive male role models growing up, and the one man who was always present in my earlier years was my dad. He played football when he was younger and came from a long line of macho, hyper-masculine military and sports men. All that he understood to be important was the competition and the winning.
By nature of his being my father, all I knew about soccer was that it was a game that was meant to be won.
* * *
I was very good at doing my part to make that happen on my various soccer teams. I wasn't a Big Deal, but I was a big deal, starting on one of the best club teams in the Midwest and winning several awards during my high school years. I really only understood the strategies and complexities of the game through the lens of winning, and it wasn't truly until this past weekend that I figured that out.
When I was playing when I was younger, winning in soccer and being hyper-competitive about it meant that I would receive attention and affection from my dad (and in turn, from a long line of demanding and hyper-masculine coaches I had along the way – though many of those men were much better role models to me in the big picture. Their only job at the competitive level I was playing was to make us winners – my dad's job was to be my dad). He was proud of me when I was a winner, and I was involved with quite a bit of winning – I loved it. That skewed my entire view of the sport to my dad's view that it was a game to be won and, crucially, that there was no other conceivable reason to be playing.
That still follows me to this day. A friend of a friend once told me during a game of Scene It that I'm not a sore loser, but that he had never met anyone in his life who loved the act of winning as much as I did. What struck me as something of a compliment at the time now haunts me. That shit pops up when I play Uno – the need to win trumps the experience of playing a fun game with friends, and that's because my dad instilled a winning-is-everything mentality at a young age, because winning was the point of competition, competition was the point of all games, and being the best in a competition proved one's manliness and worth.
The thing that strikes me as one of the most unfortunate parts of the whole thing is that there is no endgame to this continuous cycle of competing and winning. There is no point at which I was done proving my worth. As I mentioned above, I played on some really good soccer teams in my life, and losing was not something I had much experience with. But there was always another game to be won. Always another tournament to be won. Always a 4-1 win that wasn't quite good enough because it wasn't 4-0, and that meant I had failed to fully live up to my role on the team and my role as my father's son.
There is simply never a "good enough" with the way the patriarchy works, having instilled a mentality in my father that winning was everything and the more you won, the better man you were.
* * *
In the last year, I've begun playing in a local, mostly non-competitive over-25, co-ed league. We keep score, and yes, everybody on every team knows what their record is for the season even if we don't officially track standings, but the general mood of this league is a bunch of people just wanting to go out and have some fun and get some exercise while playing soccer. People apologize when they knock someone down, there is always a helping hand back up, and people of all kinds of skill levels are constantly encouraging one another across team lines.
So here I was on Sunday night, playing indoor soccer in this league, and I had one of the best experiences of my life.
I was asked to sub for another team following my team's game, so I played in two separate games. My team won our game 6-1, and the team I subbed for lost by the same score in the second game. Yet it was in the middle of that 6-1 defeat in the second game that I had this amazing moment.
I was watching players of all skill levels crisscross the field, finding the best angles to receive and distribute the ball, people shouting "whoa, NICE save!" to the other team's goalie, and generally just watching 20 or so men and women of all colors, sexualities (hello!), and sizes just enjoying themselves and enjoying the game of soccer for what it was – a superbly complex and intricate game that offers so much potential for beauty. The beautiful game.
What I realized was that I have loved the game of soccer my entire life, but that I had been loving it for all of the wrong reasons.
I still see value in competition, and even in winning (which makes fun those tournaments where the objective is to win), but now I recognize that I had never actually loved the game of soccer for any reason other than its ability to give me something else at which to win. Even though I understood all of the dynamics of gameplay and the intricacies of the game when I was younger, I had never seen the sport as something that could bring people together and lift everyone's spirits regardless of the result. All I'd seen was just a game that pits one set of players against another in a quest to win.
And because of what had been communicated to me by my dad (and reinforced by a patriarchal culture) about winning and masculinity, I'd seen that as a quest to win at being a man, too.
It was a moving and profound moment for me after more than 20 years of playing this game to see it in an entirely new light. A light that doesn't encourage hyper-masculinity and winning above all else. A light that allows for someone wearing a different color shirt during the game to still, in the end, be a part of a team with me that's bigger than the ones we represented while competing for an hour. A light that says there is more to being an important and valued man than simply my ability to win.
And sure, I still love winning—that may take some time to break down. But what I love even more is to take this one extra piece of patriarchal bullshit that I've been carrying around in my soccer bag for almost my entire life and throw it away, to never be worried about again, because there is more to me and more to this game than the final score.
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five People Whose Lives You'd Like to Experience for a Day. For the purposes of this question, you'd be riding along Being John Malkovich-style, i.e. you'd be inside their brains but you wouldn't be running the show. So, like, if you wanted to experience President Obama's life for a day, you'd get to experience his thoughts and perceptions, but you wouldn't be able to make or influence his decisions. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
