My Five Favorite Stories Oct. 11–18
On the myriad forces that are shaping our lives
Hi lovely and beloved readers and writers. I’m back!
is taking a medical leave this week (and for as long as she wants and needs thereafter) after a difficult birth which perhaps you read about here. Please send good healing thoughts and prayers her way. Meanwhile, I guess you’re stuck with me until returns next week. :)
My personal life is so mixed up right now you might not want an update. It’s a befuddling mix of good and bad, high and low, off and on, strong opposite feelings.
I often write about my adult son who has a major mental illness, and he’s off the rails lately, which always causes a lot of stress. But this time, we’re trying “tough love,” which is even harder! I’ll write about it one day…
At the same time, Muni asked me to be the godmother of her adorable newborn Alyana Noor, whom I featured in our newsletter two weeks ago (check out the pics!), which makes me very proud and kind of astonished at the reach of this little publication. Imagine, me here in San Francisco, an old grey-haired American lady, having a deep connection to a newborn baby in Pakistan. It’s happy making. :)
I’m also blessed to have two adorable granddaughters living nearby, and on Monday, which was Indigenous People’s Day (even if our white- supremacist-in-chief has decreed we must go back to calling it Columbus Day now) we babysat them and took them to Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, which has the most amazing animatronic dinosaurs which move (heads, tails, hands) and roar. Our 5-year-old was mostly thrilled; but our 2-year-old found them scary, so she and I went back inside and played a game while we waited for her big sister and Grandpa to join us.
She was very impressed despite the brief exposure, and talked a lot about them in the car on the way home. I wish I’d recorded it. “Tomorrow I’ll go back to see the dinosaurs,” she said seriously in her charming baby accent, “and I’ll ask the dinosaur nicely not to bite off my hand.”
That about sums up my life at the moment. Frightening and adorable and insane all at once. And surging underneath it all, a powerful rush of love.
You know what else I love besides babysitting granddaughters? The amazing stories we publish each day on Fourth Wave! Here are five of my favorites from the past week.
A Feminist, a Misogynist, and a Patriarchist Live in My House by
This one is my absolute favorite because it gives me hope. Dami lives in Nigeria and tells us the story of being offered a good job in another town, and how her father opposes her moving out of the family home to take the opportunity, and her mother supports her father, yet Dami — a grown woman — makes her own decision for herself. She still loves her parents; she still loves her hometown, and perhaps even the boyfriend who lives there; but she also loves herself — enough to refuse to hand over her power to run her own life, enough to pursue the life she wants to live.
This story tells me that a quiet revolution is happening worldwide, that women are recognizing their worth and waking up to their responsibility to make a better world for themselves and the girls and boys growing up all around them. When enough women feel the way Dami does, we will remake the world in a better way — a way that doesn’t put one gender above another, one race above another, one nation above another, but recognizes the inherent worth and right to autonomy of every human being.
We don’t have to throw stones or burn buildings to dismantle the patriarchy. We just have to refuse to participate.
Trump War on “Gender Ideology” is Nothing New by
When this story arrived in our inbox it had a list of maybe 20 references at the bottom. moved those links in text per Fourth Wave style (yes, we have a style, and a Stylesheet) after requests for the author to do so went unanswered. That was a lot of work — thanks, Muni! — which we did because this story is worth it. It shows the direct parallels between Trump’s actions and the Nazi playbook. Historians already see those links plain as day, but some of the rest of us need this summary to see the light. The first paragraph gets right to the point:
Books mentioning or written by Queer people have disappeared from school libraries. US Government agencies have deleted webpages discussing LGBTQ+ health. According to the New York Times, almost 200 words — including “trans”, “LGBT” and “sexuality” — are now prohibited from use in official state documents.
Talk about cancel culture.
Read this story if you care about fostering equality, freedom, democracy, and human rights in the United States and by extension around the world. Information is power. And we need all the power we can summon right now.
Golden Hours, Empty Halls by
This description of the author’s last day at work during the Trump government’s mass firings is a beautiful and tragic testament to the slow-motion destruction of our country as we knew it. I cannot praise her talent enough. Sylvara is a true artist. Her writing blows me away. I love this piece for its ability to evoke the tragic atmosphere of dozens of people (hundreds?) losing their jobs (their livelihoods) and packing up to go home.
We read about mass layoffs — maybe recall the offensive image of Elon Musk gleefully waving a chainsaw — but can't really envision what it must feel like to have your workplace completely shut down. It seems our empathy volume has been turned way down as a result of the massive amounts of horrible news we consume daily. At least that’s true for me. But this story gets through because of Sylvara’s storytelling. And it’s important to feel in these numbing times.
I’m an American Who Left by
Because it’s important for Americans like me to remember that we don’t have to live this (racist, sexist, homophobic) way. It’s important to have optimism. It’s important believe we can build a better world. Larry reinforces that belief by living in one! They tell us about their move from Washington Heights in New York to Reykjavik, Iceland, and it is EPIC and wondrous! Here’s a taste:
I am extremely grateful for my new home and adopted country, a land that celebrates creative expression, protects nature and environment, preaches tolerance, votes for women in the highest government positions, forms coalitions from parties that aren’t out to destroy each other, provides national healthcare, and generously supports non-profit arts institutions (instead of terrorist organizations), as well as individual artists with grants.
You will love this story. Enough said.
AI Can Undress Women, Because Men Asked it To by
Here’s an interesting report on the latest AI trend, using it to harass women. Surprise! I am almost out of hope that lawmakers will ever hold tech bros responsible for the hell they have wrought on humankind via AI, but if they ever do, this is one of the myriad kinds of abuses that must be made a crime.
Making women appear nude on social and other media is digital sexual assault. Perpetrators must face consequences. We deserve better than this! Our world will never evolve into a better place for all if we don’t hold the bad guys accountable. Luckily, writers like Uwanah are pushing us toward doing just that.
Curators boosted these stories this week
Fourth Wave featured these stories recently
- The “Easy Way Out” That Almost Killed Me by
- Trump’s War on “Gender Ideology” is Nothing New by
- Inside India’s Celebration of a 10-Armed Goddess by
That’s it for me this week. Now I’m going to go create my sign for the No Kings Protest in San Francisco which is happening nationwide today at 1:30 pm. I’m thinking I will write Make Racism Wrong Again on one side and put an American flag on the other, because we can’t let “conservatives” (aka straight-white-male supremacists) appropriate that symbol.
WE are the true patriots — we the people who believe in the Constitution and its ideals of freedom and equality.
Yours truly,
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Fourth Wave
