How you can defend democracy today and for years to come

I’m in the last weekend before the Wisconsin election for Wisconsin Supreme Court, so this will be short. Here’s what you can do today to help advance democracy:

1. Make GOTV phone calls for Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate I am supporting for Wisconsin Supreme Court. If she wins, we will have a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court until at least 2030, which will be to the Peoples’ advantage for issues such as gerrymandering, women’s rights, and voting rights.
2. Call your state’s Republican legislators in Washington DC. The Representatives do not need to know if you are not in their district. If they ask for a name and address, make something up. I am often “Susan in Green Bay.” If you call today or tomorrow, you will get voicemail, so you don’t even have to talk to a person. Tell them to release the Epstein files or to stop this illegal war (or whatever you want to tell them). The goal is to get attention to the issues we care about.
3. Who’s running for office in November? Find the candidates you will support. For your local candidate, sign her nominating papers. Circulate her nominating papers. Volunteer for her campaign. It doesn’t have to be just knocking on doors or making phone calls. One of my candidates, the fabulous Robyn Vining, looks for people to also do things like deliver campaign swag or bake for events or sign people in at events. There are plenty of volunteer opportunities that barely involve talking to other people.
4. Join your local League of Women Voters and help register voters. Be strategic about it. The LWV is non-partisan, but I do not participate in events where the attendees are likely not to agree with me politically. Almost all citizens have the right to vote. I focus on the ones who care about democracy for all.

(So we might as well use our power for good and start teaching the jerks)

What is the remedy for a smug white teenage boy who thinks he knows better than I do?

Years ago, I got takeout at this chili place. All I wanted was some Cincinnati chili to eat at home.

At home, where I have my own silverware. Where I am not forced to eat with plastic, an experience I do not enjoy plus I do not like the waste of plastic utensils.

I told the worker, an older white teenage boy, that I did not want utensils.

He put them in the bag anyhow.

I looked at them and said, “I told you I didn’t want utensils.”

He shrugged and told me it was too late to change it.

Then I gave him the cash – a ten dollar bill plus a quarter and three pennies for a charge of $9.28.

He looked at me, keyed something into the cash register, counted out 72 cents from the cash tray, and dropped them in my hand.

I said, “I gave you change so you could give me a dollar bill back. So I wouldn’t have a lot of extra coins.”

He rolled his eyes and closed the cash drawer.

I was so astonished at his rudeness and utter disregard for what I had told him that I didn’t even know what to say.

Today, I would know what to say.

Today, I would give him my middle approaching old age lady glare and say, “Please open the register, take these coins, and give me a dollar bill.”

Today, I would say, as I handed him the plastic utensils, “I told you I did not want these.”

Today, I would say, “Why are you ignoring what I tell you?”

I would not smile.

I would not laugh.

I. Would. Seethe.

Let’s seethe together. Let’s shout together. Let’s make sure we are heard.

(PS Today is the No Kings March. Are you there?)

Oh wait I mean the Hollywood Persistent Suitor Who Deserves A Hot Woman Even Though He Is A Loser Or Is Loser-ish

I just watched this show, A Remarkable Place to Die. The main character, Anais, is a detective. She’s smart and strong and doesn’t take any crap.

Her colleague, a smart, handsome male detective, is interested in her and asks her to dinner.

She says no.

The male pathologist, who is also smart and handsome, is interested in her and asks her to dinner.

She says no.

A male witness in a murder case is a grungy, ungroomed backpacker. He asks her out at the murder scene, the scene where a fellow backpacker has been killed in his sleep, a scene that I guess made Witness think of love?

She says no.

Witness waits for Anais to come out of the police station. He is still grungy and ungroomed. He asks her out.

She laughs and says it would be completely inappropriate for her to go out with someone involved in a case she was investigating.

(Not to mention there is nothing at all appealing about Witness. Nothing. Put him next to Detective and Pathologist and he disappears in his unappealingness.)

He shows up a third time and she says no again.

In the next episode, we see her waking up in the morning. She rolls over – and guess who is next to her in bed?

Not the colleague.

Not the pathologist.

But the gross, obnoxious backpacker.

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That episode – obviously – was written by a man.

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That episode was written by a man for a show made in the Year of Our Lord Twenty Twenty Five.

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This trope is not going away.

This trope is not going away despite #MeToo. Despite everything.

This trope tells men that as long as you harass a woman – a woman you could not otherwise get, BTW – eventually she will succumb and you will get what you want.

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There is a long history of this story. Look at almost every Woody Allen movie: he plays a whiny loser who punches way above his weight. Diane Keaton? Mariel Hemingway?

(Although it turns out that Diane actually did have a relationship with Allen. Gross.)

(Although maybe she felt compelled to date him because he controlled access to what she wanted. Another example of men using sex to control access to power.)

Any other movie where the slacker guy gets the girl anyhow:

• Reality Bites (I wrote about what happens 30 years after she picks the loser)
• Knocked Up
• Something About Mary
• Etc, etc, etc

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This isn’t going to change, is it? Not while men still run everything. Men write and direct the world they live in – the world they want to live in.

From the NY Times last year:

Women Directed Fewer Box Office Hits in 2025, Report Finds

The number of female filmmakers dropped to 8.1 percent this year from 13.4 percent in 2024, according to a study from the University of Southern California.

Even this headline from Variety is not encouraging, as the gain is still not to the level of our portion of the population:

Women Make Historic Gains in Streaming, as 36% of TV Creators Are Female

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I would say we should watch only shows written and produced by women, but sadly, the show A Remarkable Place to Die *is* produced by a woman. She gets the rest of it right – it’s a show about a woman that’s not about men – the men are supporting characters and Anais’ sole purpose in life is not to Find A Man, but damn. Why did she let Anais sleep with the loser? Yes, the episode was written by a man. But it was approved for production by a woman.

I wrote to the production company to complain. I will see if I get a response.

Why you should donate to or volunteer for Judge Chris Taylor, who is running for Wisconsin Supreme Court

Last week, when I was canvassing for Judge Chris Taylor for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I met Liz, who was raped when she was 19.

Stranger rape. She was, she said, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I nodded in agreement. Yes, we women have to be so careful, don’t we?

Wait.

No.

There should not be “wrong” places for us.

We should not have to be so careful.

We should be able to exist in this world without worrying that someone will harm us.

He was a rapist. He chose to violate another human being. He has all the culpability.

Holy smoke it takes a lot of work to reframe my thinking.

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She ended up pregnant.

This was before Roe. “It was when you had to go in the back streets to get an abortion,” she said.

Which is what she was forced to do.

Liz lived to tell the tale, as did another woman I know, Jane.

Jane had gotten pregnant when and her boyfriend were in college. He said it was not a good time for them to get married. She flew to Mexico for the abortion, calling her sister once she had arrived to tell her exactly where she was in case she didn’t return and her family needed to find her body.

She got the abortion and lived.

It’s been a while since Jane told me her story, but I think the boyfriend later asked her to marry him and she said nope.

(Yes! I found the post I wrote about Jane two years ago and I remembered correctly.)

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I met Lucy, 76, yesterday when I was canvassing. When I told Lucy that Judge Taylor used to be an attorney for Planned Parenthood (which is one of the reasons I want her on the Wisconsin Supreme Court – her opponent is anti-choice), Lucy didn’t miss a beat.

“I am for abortion,” she said.

Two of her college roommates had needed abortions late in much-wanted pregnancies.

One fetus didn’t have a skull and was aborted at six months.

The other fetus – seven months – had multiple anomalies and was going to die in utero. Her parents named her Abigail and held a funeral.

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This world where women have to fly to Mexico or risk their lives in back alleys? This world where a wanted baby has to die in your uterus for you to get the medical treatment you need?

We are returning to this world and worse.

We can’t depend on the US Supreme Court, but there are state courts doing the right thing.

Send a few bucks to Judge Taylor or phone bank for her so we can continue the fight for women’s rights – for all rights.

PS I changed the names and identifying details of all these women, but the stories themselves are real.

Which, alas, is probably the only thing I have in common with Nora Ephron

Remember Nora Ephron’s essay about how she hated her neck?

I hate my neck, too, but I hate my hands more.

Probably because I see my hands more than I see my neck, but whatever.

I hate my hands.

I hate how dry and wrinkled they are. I hate how thin the skin is. I hate the dark blotches.

I hate my hands.

Yes, they still work just fine.

Yes, I can hold things and carry things and make brownies and bread and wash my face and open doors and I can do all these things without pain.

But I hate them.

They are so ugly.

They look so old.

*I* look so old.

I cover them in vaseline before I go to bed.

Vaseline, it turns out, is not a magic potion that will restore youth to my skin.

I use sunblock on them.

Sunblock allegedly prevents further damage, but does not cure age.

My hands look old.

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I scold myself for being so vain.

When did I become so vain?

I wasn’t vain when I was younger because, I thought, I had nothing to be vain about. My friends always attracted more attention than I did. I had eyes. I knew who was pretty and who was not.

On a date once in college – we had gotten to the underwear-only stage – this guy told me that I would be cute if I lost some weight.

I still am not sure how to take that. Was I cute? Or was I just chubby and hence not cute?

Some additional context for this guy: He had a massive crush on one of my roommates/best friends. People always mixed us up – we were the same height, with the same hair color, and we lived together. Also, our names IRL are very similar: Think Danielle vs Danette.

(But really people are just lazy.)

She did not reciprocate his feelings.

He once offered her all of his money if she would sleep with him.

Over 40 years and I still remember that.

(She did not accept.)

(She laughed in horror.)

(I think he asked me out because he thought I was kind of a substitute for my friend.)

I knew I wasn’t vain and I saw that as a good thing.

I was proud about my lack of vanity.

I was vain about my lack of vanity.

Now I know it’s not that I was morally superior.

It’s that I was clueless, sailing along on the beauty of youth.

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I don’t have a happy ending for this story, an aha! moment where I am grateful just to be alive.

Because my hands do look old.

And my neck does look old.

But I will say that when I saw a friend at my college reunion, a friend who has always been so, so beautiful, and I told her she hasn’t aged, she laughed and said that oh yes she has.

She is still gorgeous.

Are there bushes?

The town of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, removed the provision for public restrooms in the plans for a new city park.

Some, including Alderman Chaz Schellpeper, simply feel a large restroom structure shouldn’t be so close to the park. “I’m totally opposed to building the restroom on the Green,” he said.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The same council member above also tried to remove a provision to include plumbing from the budget, simply so no later representatives of the people, people including women and children, would be tempted to add restrooms later:

Schellpeper unsuccessfully tried to eliminate the inclusion of laterals, which would be installed underground to allow restrooms to be added back into the project, from the concept plan. He acknowledged his intention was to “hamstring” future aldermen from “making a bad decision” for restrooms near the oval space.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Are you as shocked shocked as I am that a man would not see any need for a public restroom?

Are you shocked shocked that a man would not even consider the needs of anyone who doesn’t have a white penis?

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Last Saturday morning, as we were standing in line waiting for the library to open, an older white woman said: That Mamdani sure can spend money.

(This was not completely out of the blue – another woman and I were talking about how great Mamdani was.)

Me: What do you mean?

Woman: He paid people $50 an hour to shovel snow!

Me: First, he paid them $30 – three zero – not fifty. But even so, so what? He got the streets clear in a day. That’s a big deal.

Woman: Wasting taxpayer money.

Me: But that is the exact purpose of taxpayer money – to make life better for all of us. How much would it have cost for the streets and sidewalks to be covered with snow and people not able to get anywhere?

Woman: It’s a waste of money!

Me: We are at *the library,* which is funded by taxpayer money. The sidewalks and roads you used to get here – taxpayer money. Our public schools – taxpayer money. This is socialism – where we use our money to improve the community.

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Who are these people who think that the purpose of taxpayer money is to be saved? To be hoarded?

They’re OK with the regime spending one billion yes billion with a B dollars a day on an illegal war against Iran, but not with spending a few maybe tens of thousands of dollars to do things that actually serve us? That make our lives better?

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When you plan to attend a public event – a festival, a concert at a city park, a fair – what’s one of the first things you think of?

I can tell you what I think of: Will I be able to pee? Will there be public restooms?

If the answer is no, then I have to do some hard thinking. Maybe I just don’t go. Or, if I go, I stop drinking fluids several hours before the event.

If I had children, I would stop at the “Maybe I just don’t go,” because it is not reasonable to dehydrate children.

I don’t think men ever go through this process.

When the entire world is your toilet, you don’t have to care about anyone else.

PS I did email the reporter for the story and asked him if anyone had asked the council member where women and children were supposed to pee, but I have not heard back from him.

Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple

It’s always the same thing with these guys, isn’t it? The ones who complain about women being golddiggers or sleeping their way to the top are the very ones who got their money and power through connections – marrying the boss’ daughter, playing tennis with the nephew of the guy who owns the company, inheriting from a slumlord father.

(Or they are just bitter and angry because they have not reached those levels and don’t understand why their white penises have not given them the power they think they rightly deserve.)

Every accusation is a confession.

It’s a story as old as time.

Many Europeans crossed the sea, including large numbers of poor women who came to seek their fortunes. Mothers were frequently disappointed. Since these immigrant women brought no resources, many of the young men who came to the colony to get rich preferred to marry girls of colour, whose dowries included land and slaves they could use profitably. Such preferences began to inspire jealousy in white women.

Source: Julien Raymond, Observations on the Origin and Progression of the White Colonists’ Prejudice against Men of Colour (1791), quoted in Empire’s Crossroads, by Carrie Gibson

(True, women have long had to marry financial security because marriage has long been one of the only ways for women to sleep safely. But despite the way Julien Raymond, an indigo grower on Haiti – who inherited his plantation but who later became an abolitionist, so that’s awesome, Julien! – wait he sold his slaves to become a full-time abolitionist? Couldn’t he have freed them? – phrases it, I would suggest that women were seeking survival, not a fortune, via the only route available to them.)

(Also, although I question the interpretation of women’s sentiment by an 18th century man, abolitionist or not, I must comment on the apparent misplaced jealousy. My sisters in Christ! Other women are not the enemy – the patriarchy is the enemy. )

(Whoa the Julien Raymond/Raimond plot thickens! I found this on wikipedia. Racism has entered the chat! Like – his dad married his mom despite her color because she had money? Julien is sounding more and more like Arthur Schopenhauer, a bitter old German philosopher who thought women were inferior and, as it turns out, was outshone by his mother, who wrote books that sold better than his did.)

He (Julien Raimond) was born a free man of color; the son of a French colonist and a colored mother born to a planter in the isolated Sud province of the colony. His mother, Marie Bagasse, was significantly wealthier and more educated than his father, Pierre Raimond, providing an economic incentive for their interracial marriage. 

(Also, I saw that Julien was an activist for voting rights for free people of color – the author uses the word “people” but I bet she meant “men,” – on the basis that they were taxpayers. As in, if you had money, you should be able to vote. Which I guess was the prevailing philosophy at the time looking at you United States but still, people are awful.)

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Sleeping your way to the top started way before 1791. You probably were taught that Christopher Columbus was a plucky explorer who happened to convince the king and queen of Spain to finance his expedition just because he was so cool.

Ha.

No.

He married the daughter of a man with connections to the Portuguese court – the very court that had kings and princes related to Queen Isabella – and those connections played a part in Isabella’s support.

Many of the crown’s advisors, however, were reluctant to believe this unknown Genoese sailor. Although he had made some important connections in Portugal and had married well, his relative obscurity did not inspire confidence….Still the queen was intrigued. Perhaps it was the promise of wealth, or the crown’s own spirit of adventure, or a simple post-Reconquista confidence. Perhaps, as some historians have argued, Columbus won over the queen for more sentimental reasons – Isabella’s great-grandfather was King John I of Portugal, her grandfather was Prince John, and her great-uncle was Prince Henry. Although Columbus was Genoese, his Portuguese connections did him no harm.

Source: Empire’s Crossroads, by Carrie Gibson

But how could such a humble man marry someone with such connections? Historian Samuel Eliot Morison had theories about it decades ago. The wife was an ancient 25 years old and didn’t have a dowry, which I guess means she was desperate. (Speaking of women needing marriage for survival.)

Discussing the question of how Christopher Columbus, the son of a Genoese wool weaver, could marry the daughter of a Portuguese Knight of Santiago, a member of the household of Prince John, Lord of Reguengos de Monsaraz (Master of Santiago,) and of Prince Henry the Navigator’s household, Samuel Eliot Morison^[4] wrote that this is “no great mystery.” Filipa was “already about 25 years old,” her mother was a widow “with slender means,” and “her mother was glad enough to have no more convent bills to pay, and a son-in-law […] who asked for no dowry.”

Christopher Columbus slept his way to the top

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And this practice has carried on. Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, of course, is one of the most egregious examples. Bless his sweet heart he’s kind of dumb, but he married the boss’ daughter and then went into business with the boss’ son and then the boss, who happened to be an F500 CEO, threw a ton of business at Johnson’s/son’s company, which definitely violates ethical practices and is probably illegal and I’m surprised the auditors never said anything.

Point is, Johnson would never have amassed the fortune he did had he not married into a very good situation.

Wisconsin representative Jim Sensenbrenner also had the sense to be born to riches, but at least he was smart enough to graduate from Stanford.

You would think that someone who came from this background would have fought more for women’s rights, but I guess no.

Sensenbrenner was born in Chicago, Illinois. His great-grandfather, Frank J. Sensenbrenner, was involved in the early marketing of Kotex sanitary napkin and served as the second president of Kimberly-Clark.

Source: Wikipedia

Inheriting your fortune. Sleeping your way to the top. Making the right friends. It’s what white men do. They connect to power and money and then they think they got there on their merits.

Howard Lutnick? The current secretary of the treasury and one of the regime’s useless idiots?

He came from a middle-class family. But yet got a Wall Street job where soon, he was making a ton of money. How did he get such a job, you ask? Aren’t those Wall Street jobs widely coveted?

Why yes they are but when you make friends with a partner at the firm who also happens to the the boss’ nephew? It sure makes it a lot easier to get that interview.

After graduating, Lutnick worked at Noonan, Astley & Pierce as a broker for the United States dollar–Japanese yen exchange, where he met B. Gerald Cantor.^[13] In 1983, Cantor took Lutnick as his protégé and hired him at his eponymous firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, encouraged by Rod Fisher, a partner at the firm and Cantor’s nephew.

Source: Wikipedia

Men. Marry. Money. And. Power.

But assume women don’t accomplish anything on our own.

I dunno – because The Patriarchy has me so pissed off?

I was on an overnight flight recently. After six hours of not sleeping well because who can sleep well sitting up in an airplane seat, they turned the lights on to serve breakfast, which also is the last thing I want at Dark O’Clock when I have not slept. I do not want food. I do not want your wretched coffee. I want to be left alone.

Oh good grief here I am justifying why I do not want to smile.

We should not have to justify our feelings to anyone.

When the flight attendant asked me if I wanted anything, I took off my mask and asked for water.

I was not rude.

I was not loud.

I was not demanding.

I was not cranky.

I politely said, “I would like some water, please.”

And yet.

The male flight attendant asked, “What’s wrong? How about a smile?”

How dare I not ask for water in the way he wanted?

How dare I not arrange my face in a manner that pleased him?

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In all my life, I don’t think a woman has told me to smile.

To be fair, not many men have told me to smile, either.

They have told me not to be so direct, so loud, so outspoken.

But they have not told me to smile.

Maybe that’s why this was such a shock? That at my age, I finally got the “Why don’t you just smile?” treatment?

Except I think I would be just as angry if this happened all the time.

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Seriously, why does a FA care if a middle-aged woman who just woke up is smiling?

Are all the men smiling?

If not, did he tell them to smile? I didn’t hear him prompting anyone else to smile.

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It’s been almost two weeks and I am still angry about this.

You know what makes me even more angry?

When he asked me to smile, I did.

So much dodging

Did I tell you about seeing an old – what should I call him? not boyfriend but someone who would call me every day and took me to meet his parents and told me he could see a future with me but then married the woman he had been driving 12 hours each way to see about once a month the entire time he was carrying on with me? – JERK at my college reunion?

Well I did see him.

I saw him and he looked awful – super skinny, which could be illness and is nothing to mock, but also with long – like down to his waist – scraggly, dirty hair.

The thinness might not be a choice.

But the hair was.

My friend Karen Ashby wrote a poem about it:

Reunion

How appropriate

You aged like you treated me

Rather terribly

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Well.

I just heard about another former boyfriend and I use that word so, so lightly.

This guy – let’s call him Dick – was from grad school. We dated in the spring of my first year and in that summer.

I was supposed to spend the fall semester in Rotterdam.

I flew to Rotterdam and spent two days there before returning to Austin because –

DO NOT DO THIS! DO NOT DO THIS STUPID THING, YOUNG WOMEN –

because I missed him so much.

(WTAF was I thinking?)

In the two days that I was gone, he had already asked out my friend Sabine. We were only beginning friends so she didn’t know I was crazy about Dick. He told her that he and I were not at all serious, which I guess would have been OK if he had given me the same information. He did not.

He told me he had planned to spend the semester apart thinking about our relationship, so I waited until the end of the semester, hoping, hoping.

(I was so stupid.)

I should have just said, Oh OK. You want to break up. Bye.

But I didn’t. So a lot of my misery is my own fault.

After that semester, I realized that I had put myself through extra torture for nothing because sure enough, he did not want to be with me.

I also spent the semester being really angry at Sabine, which was unfair to her. She kept pushing and trying to revive our friendship. It wasn’t until she told me everything that had happened with her and Dick and we discovered that he had used the exact same lines on both of us that I was over him and back with her.

She and I have been close friends every since.

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As one does, over the years, I googlestalked Dick. He married a woman who taught at a small college in California. She looks like a nice person. They had two children. He already had one child from his first marriage. (He was divorced when I met him.)

I talked to Sabine yesterday and she, also, has googlestalked. And she discovered that he is married again.

His third marriage.

And he married a woman more than 20 years his junior.

And they have two toddlers together.

Yes he is on his third marriage and his fourth and fifth children.

Y’all, he is 68 years old.

With two toddlers.

He will not get to sleep at night for years.

He will not have a peaceful house for decades.

He will never be able to retire.

Maybe it was another miracle?

I just started reading Rosalind Miles’ Who Cooked the Last Supper? I thought it must be new, but no, she published it in 1988.

1988.

That was before I had even heard of women’s studies. Before I had heard of The Patriarchy. Before it struck me that the textbook in my art history class – which was taught by a woman – had not included a single female artist and that professional women didn’t wear dresses, much less pants, to work.

Before I thought to question a male boss who arrived at work at 6 a.m. and left at 7 p.m. and came in on weekends yet always had clean clothes, a clean house, and a meal when he got home.

Before I started to wonder why only men seemed to get promotions, even though I had documented results that were as good as or better than my male co-workers.

Before I was laid off from a good job after a corporate edict that every manager had to cut staff by 10% and realized that I was the only childless woman on the team – the rest of the team was married men with stay at home wives.

Before I thought to vote for women.

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Just a few years ago, Nautilus ran entire story – Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too – Many famous scientists have something in common—they didn’t work long hours – about how male scientists and writers found success by focusing on their work and spending the rest of the day in leisure. About how we all need to have a lot of leisure time to process our brain work and make contributions to art and science.

How on earth did they accomplish that, one wonders. How on earth did these men spend a lot of time in leisure?

(The author does include a woman: “Irish novelist Edna O’Brien would work in the morning, ‘stop around one or two and spend the rest of the afternoon attending to mundane things.'” One does wonder what those “mundane things” might have been. Laundry, perhaps? Cooking? Grocery shopping? Making sure the kids got a spot in summer camp?)

(And this: “Microsoft founder Bill Gates to the Beatles put in their 10,000 hours before anyone heard of them.” The author seems to have forgotten that Gates had family connections to IBM.)

After his morning walk and breakfast, Darwin was in his study by 8 and worked a steady hour and a half. At 9:30 he would read the morning mail and write letters. At 10:30, Darwin returned to more serious work, sometimes moving to his aviary, greenhouse, or one of several other buildings where he conducted his experiments.

By noon, he would declare, “I’ve done a good day’s work,” and set out on a long walk on the Sandwalk, a path he had laid out not long after buying Down House. (Part of the Sandwalk ran through land leased to Darwin by the Lubbock family.)

When he returned after an hour or more, Darwin had lunch and answered more letters. At 3 he would retire for a nap; an hour later he would arise, take another walk around the Sandwalk, then return to his study until 5:30, when he would join his wife, Emma, and their family for dinner.

On this schedule he wrote 19 books, including technical volumes on climbing plants, barnacles, and other subjects; the controversial Descent of Man; and The Origin of Species, probably the single most famous book in the history of science, and a book that still affects the way we think about nature and ourselves.

Nautilus

Oh the author, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, is male. But you knew that.

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It took another woman, Katrine Marcal, to point out the obvious in Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?

The reason, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, that your male scientists and artists had so much time to relax and ponder and take walks after a lunch they had not prepared in clothes they had not washed and put away in a house they had not cleaned was because someone else was doing all the damn work.

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Miles’ book came out decades ago.

Back when I still stupid voted.

Back when I didn’t even question the world around me because it was the world around me and that’s just how it was.

(In 1988, when a friend suggested we could wear pants to work, I was horrified. That was simply not done. I didn’t wear pants to work until the early 2000s.)

(I was an idiot.)

I am trying to make up for it now.