Surprise me

View in browser

May 25, 2018

Pamela Smith Hudson

This week

You know, some weeks this newsletter just effortlessly pours forth from my fingertips. Other weeks, everything is making me angry and I can't figure out what to prioritize and I'm probably hungry and I'm already mentally in weekend mode and ughsdmgjghdgkjhaflkalf. This week is one of the latter. But hey, I'm hitting send anyway! This is precisely why I love a weekly routine. There's always next Friday, when it'll probably be easier.

On the podcast, you can listen to Amina and I nerd out about "the glass cliff" as an inapt metaphor and talk about women who leap to the defense of men accused of bad behavior.

I'm reading

Meet 18 black women running for office in Alabama. The profound presence of Doria Raglund. The NFL's plantation-style politics. There are horrific abuses happening at the U.S.-Mexico border. The real risk of Trump’s dehumanization of immigrants, and the limits of Trump's interest in women's bodies. On the labels applied to people who have experienced sexual assault. Solnit on sex as a commodity. The people who traveled home to Ireland to vote on the abortion referendum. "How can you have 'zero complaints' about a workplace someone else remembers as containing the worst verbal abuse of her career?" How data took over advertising. Is motherhood a genre? How stigma affects which menstrual products people use. How the child-welfare system is like the criminal-justice system. When "religious freedom" restricts civil rights. The obit of Dovey Johnson Roundtree, pioneering civil rights lawyer. Stephanie Beatriz's bisexual awakening. A very supportive bra-donation effort. How to kill a fish. The women fighters of the Tamil Tigers. How Germany's history informs its regulation of Facebook. What happened in Vegas. The techies hawking free-market “solutions” to the nation’s housing crisis. How the camping tent came to symbolize homelessness. Why do Americans stay when their town has no future? A road trip through de-populated rural Kansas. The secret joy of internet ghost towns. Brit Reed and the new generation of indigenous chefs. Let's do 11 a.m. lunch.

Click here to see these links as a list.

Members only

You can support my work by becoming a paying member for just $5/year. [This is a secure site that takes all major credit cards but, unfortunately, not PayPal. For now.] What are you missing? Usually, pie charts. Click here to see what they're all about.

I’m looking & listening

Feelin' Fruity with Seth Bogart. The Studs Terkel audio archive. Dear Sugars ohe invisible work women do. Hurray for the Riff Raff's Pa'lante video. "On My Way," a parable about bailing. Down for Whatever, live at Otherwild with Hex, who talks about how her gender is often misunderstood. Girlhood across America in photos.

GIFspiration

I am a human glitch-gif today.

I endorse

Instead of just getting depressed after reading some horrific articles about what's happening in the world, read a little closer or do a google to figure out which organizations and elected officials are working to change things. Then support them with a donation and/or make a call to your representatives. If you're posting, "This is awful, but what can we do about it?" on the internet, know that the answer to your question is at your fingertips. Take the next step. It's not hard.

You endorse

Ohnut, an intimate wearable redefining painful sex. "As a sex coach, I see lots of women who experience pain during sex. Ohnut is the first wearable that is addressing this issue faced by 75% of women head-on. Pain during sex is a tough subject to broach with partners. It can bring up so much for each party, that's why having something that can literally take the pain away is so important to helping people have better sex." -Myisha Battle.

What do you endorse? Submit a link here.

The Classifieds

“Your Art Will Save Your Life is the artist's guidebook to create, thrive, and survive amid any political shitstorm.” —BUST Magazine

Support sex-ed for incarcerated youth! Support queer & trans health in the Midwest! Support Family Tree Clinic!

"This is the blueprint." - Aminatou Sow
Glynnis MacNicol's NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS, takes readers from Canada to New York to Wyoming in its mapping of contemporary adulthood, unmoored from the institutions that once defined it for women. Pre-order now.

Pre-order Nikki Darling’s novel Fade Into You, on Feminist Press! And if you're a nice single man in L.A. and would like to take her to dinner, feel free to do that as well! write.ndarling@gmail.com. She’s lovely, smart and funny!

Sister District connects volunteer teams in blue areas to swing districts where we can flip state legislative seats blue. Join us.

My advertisers rave about the clicks and eyeballs they get.

Buy your ad today.

Testimonials

"I love seeing @annfriedman's curated reading list pop up in my inbox every Friday." -Magdalena Slapik. Hi, it's me, popping up amidst your millions of GDPR emails!

"Reading articles linked in @annfriedman's newsletter (which, in and of itself, is always a great read)." -Twanna A. Hines. I am both a means and an end.

"Second best decision I've made this week - subscribing to @annfriedman's newsletter. (#1 is ordering @shakeshack for lunch today...best worst decision?)" -Sarah Alice. I hope you ordered it at 11am.