Dingus of the Week: Women’s History Month
Dingus of the Week: Women’s History Month
You can't have equal pay, but you can have this inspiring Instagram post
In 1987, just five years after the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated, Congress declared March National Women's History Month as a way to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of women in society. That’s right, five years after Americans were like, “Never mind we don’t think women are equal” Congress was like, “But how about we celebrate you in a month everyone kinda hates anyway? It’s not the worst month, we gave that one to Black history, but you can have the second worst. YOU ARE WELCOME.”
Ladies, you cannot have equal rights. But what you can have is this month where we talk about how great you are and how much of the institutionalized BS you’ve had to overcome to achieve great things, like inventing the circular saw, the first computer algorithm, and the escape raft, which I assume was built to float away from men.
Americans will do nothing to close the wage gap, stop women from dying in childbirth, or mandate paid leave policies for parents, but what we will do is write this nice tweet about how “women are so important.”
Is sexual violence against teen girls on the rise? Yes. Do women still do the majority of the household chores and childcare? Also, yes. Are reproductive rights being rolled back? You bet. Are lawmakers in states trying to legislate trans women out of existence? Yep. Could we solve a lot of these problems with an Equal Rights Amendment that is just sitting there? Absolutely. And, we will do none of those things.
But you can have 15 percent off Thinx underwear, which may or may not be safe to use.
Yes, March is the month we celebrate the way women keep accomplishing things no matter how hard we stomp on them. Absolutely incredible work, ladies. We love you and celebrate you. And under no circumstances will we increase your pay or offer paid maternity leave.
If you want, you can attend your company’s special “Women’s Month Self-Care Webinar”, which happens over the lunch hour and we are not serving lunch. Also, no one can work from home anymore.
If you are really lucky, this year, your company and those around you will celebrate Women's History Month the way people have celebrated women's achievements for centuries, by pretending it never happened.
And Now For Something Good:
Some of you may know about the lawsuit against friend-of-the-newsletter Moira Donegan. Well, that lawsuit has been settled and I can confirm that Moira had to pay zero of her own money to that man and now the statute of limitations on further lawsuits is up. This is a good thing and has huge ramifications for women who want to speak out about abuse. I also think the work Moira does and continues to do, is on the front of misogyny in our culture. It’s hard, but she’s so relentlessly smart, and analytical. I look forward to seeing all she will accomplish now that she can move on.
Corporations seem to be offering more money to hourly workers. This seems like a very good thing.
This week, former dingus-of-the-year-runner-up Elon Musk scrapped with a Twitter employee on Twitter. The employee is Haraldur “Halli” Þorleifsson, who also happens to be Iceland's Person of the Year. Þorleifsson is an all-around stand up guy, who became a Twitter employee after he sold his company Ueno to Twitter for a lot of money. Instead of taking that pay out in stock, to skirt around paying a larger sum of taxes, he took it as a salary, specifically to pay taxes. According to the Iceland Review. “Halli was born with muscular dystrophy and came from a working class background. In statements about his decision to pay back into the Icelandic social system, he cited both healthcare and education in Iceland as keys to his success. Notably, he was one of the highest tax payers in the nation after the sale of Ueno.” So, Halli is a reminder that there are good people out there. And Musk fighting with him means we all got to learn about him. And also, now maybe he can sue that guy into another dingus dimension. Here is hoping. But in the meantime, if you missed everything, here is a story about it all.
Here are some important facts about women. Such as, “Whenever a man leaves a room full of women, all the women sigh dramatically and mutter, ‘Not man enough!’”
Five women in Texas are suing over the state’s abortion ban.
This is an important story about Judy Heumann, a disability rights activist, and the impact of her life and work.
And this is a story about a student who created a solutions-based curriculum for climate change.
What I Am Drinking:
Last week, my sister and I went to the Aviary in Chicago. We spent the evening on some very uncomfortable couches, being served by people who seemed bored, so you know it was expensive.
We experienced the five-course menu, which came with five drinks and five food pairings. For the life of me, I cannot remember what these drinks were. The first one was floral and gin-based. A delight. The second one had lychee in it. Wonderful. And that was the point in the night when I started telling my sister about the one time a poet hit on me in a Brooklyn bar bathroom and I realized, we were gonna need more water. Fortunately, the third drink was basically a boozy banana slushy. And I say, “fortunately,” because I absolutely skipped it. Artificial banana flavoring should be illegal. Banana flavoring has no relation to an actual banana, a hard-working fruit, whose reputation I am not attempting to besmirch. Instead, things flavored with “banana” seem to have more of an essence of grocery store linoleum, than an actual tropical plant.
I had three sips just because I paid a lot of money for that thing and then put it down.
A fourth drink happened. I don’t know what it was. I also did not finish it, more out of self-preservation than an abhorrence to it’s taste.
The fifth drink was a boozy milkshake which was served with homemade potato chips. This was quite possibly one of the best things I have ever consumed. At some point, I took my bag of potato chips and just dumped it into the milkshake and started calling it “rich people frostys and fries.” I believe I said, “This is the fanciest Wendy’s I’ve ever been to.”
The couple next to us, also on the couch
, was on their first date. And at some point, my sister and I heard the man say he didn’t have a library card or know anyone with a library card. When his date went to the bathroom, I told him was “giving Patrick Bateman.”Then, as we were all enjoying our milkshakes, I saw he was not touching his chips. I asked him why and he said he didn’t eat chips at all. He didn’t think they were healthy. So, I snatched them from him and ate them all.
This is probably why I cannot go back to the Aviary. But I probably can’t afford it anyway.
I will say, I am now going to look for more opportunities to consume boozy milkshakes. And I might have to alter my strictly “no milk” stance.
We are learning and growing. We are reflecting. We also did not get a hangover.I also enjoyed Grapes and Grains, a lovely bar in the Fulton Market, where my sister and I went before the Aviary to meet up with
(a wonderful Chicago-based writer and a person with the best laugh I’ve ever heard). I loved their “Back and Black” drink, which is a twist on a Manhattan, and their sparkling rose.Also, one of the piano players at Grapes and Grains was a guy I knew from high school in South Dakota. Adam Nelson! A guy who can play “In the Air Tonight” on the piano and makes it work without the guitars and who is expecting his first baby any day now!
Clearly, we are aging in reverse. Portraits of us are hiding in attics somewhere.
There is a law of restaurants: the fancier the restaurant, the more stupid the seating. This is why Denny’s has the best places to sit. It’s cheap as hell.
Milk was a DOTW in 2021. And this might be the only time I’ve had second thoughts about a dingus.
On Int'l Women's Day I was in a zoom meeting with a group of men and one female graduate student who was advancing to candidacy to get her MFA. Four men took turns telling her how she should think about her screenplay, how she should approach it, what she should cut out of the screenplay, and how using it as a subtle homage to "Thelma and Louise" was not being original. I was the only female professor there - and had already thoroughly discussed the script with her one-on-one. After the meeting I wrote her and reiterated that it is important to listen and consider other people's views, but ultimately make sure to stay true to one's vision. She wrote back "Oh, I intend to." Hahahahahah
OMG I love all of your newsletters, but this one was especially spectacular. I forwarded it to 16 women, some of whom already subscribe.
I was in the car with my teenage nephew on International Women's Day. The radio station we were listening to said, "AT 5PM, we'll play one hour of music by women." He turns to me and says, 'You only get one hour on women's day." When it hit 5PM, we put that station back on. After two songs by women, they played 3 songs by men. My nephew says, "Well, you make 80 cents on the dollar to men, so you only get 20% of the women's music hour."
Also, NBC Sports Chicago shared a graphic with a bunch of women who play for Chicago teams, except at least two of them don't play for Chicago teams any more. If you can't put in a tiny bit of effort to make sure it's accurate, just skip it.