614 lines
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614 lines
80 KiB
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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
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<title>26 November, 2021</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<body>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Andrew Cuomo’s Downfall Began with a Book Deal</strong> - A new report details how the former New York governor forced aides to work on his lucrative pandemic memoir, and how that scandal connects to the others that brought him down. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/andrew-cuomos-downfall-began-with-a-book-deal">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why Russia Hasn’t Cracked Down on COVID-19</strong> - The country’s fragile political climate has repeatedly undermined its response to the pandemic. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/why-russia-hasnt-cracked-down-on-covid-19">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Reëxamining the Legacy of Race and Robert E. Lee</strong> - The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/reexamining-the-legacy-of-race-and-robert-e-lee">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Best Music of 2021</strong> - I found myself pulled toward albums that were elemental, tender, free. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2021-in-review/the-best-music-of-2021">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kurt Gödel’s Loophole and Donald Trump’s Defiance</strong> - Enforcing the law is harder than it might seem when those having the law enforced against them have contempt for it. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kurt-godels-loophole-and-donald-trumps-defiance">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>The modern family</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="Group of young adults, photographed from above, on various painted tarmac surface, at sunrise." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hH8xKhUSqj2UYUdyVNvbs4NPk3Q=/482x0:8179x5773/1310x983/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70150668/GettyImages_912015306.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Amid distance and estrangement and strain, some are happily replacing the clans they’re born into with chosen families.
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</p>
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<div class="c-float-left">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
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</figure>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hSEaCC">
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Part of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22785317/family-issue">Family Issue</a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight">The Highlight</a>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.
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</p></li>
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</ul>
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<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="cZFkIn"/>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o7924N">
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The rules were simple.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Uvwatd">
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Stephanie Drury set one boundary with her mother: Don’t shame me. Stephanie’s mom wasn’t allowed to shame her daughter for her hair or her wardrobe or the way she raised her own children. If she did, Stephanie would stop talking to her.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ti7Jja">
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The boundary didn’t hold. Every time they spoke, Stephanie’s mom would inevitably shame her for one reason or another. Stephanie would cut off contact for a month or two, feel guilty, then call her mother back. Even when her mother promised to do better, she would fall back into her own patterns. So would Stephanie: She would cut off contact again, she would feel guilty again, rinse, repeat.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="98gmW5">
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Finally, after a year of back-and-forth, Stephanie’s husband asked whether she and her parents would be willing to have a mediated conversation on how to improve their overall relationship. They asked a trusted family friend who was a pastor to mediate. When he sent an email to the people who would be participating in that discussion, Stephanie’s mother seemed to interpret the very act of asking for a meeting as an act of aggression. She replied with, “It’s too bad that Stephanie has decided to never talk to us again. It’s so sad that Stephanie has made this decision, and that we’re never going to see our grandchildren.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xclyJ2">
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“I was so relieved that someone else was bearing witness to this insanity that I grew up with,” Stephanie, who works as a risk analyst in Seattle, says. (Several people in this article asked that their last names not be used in order to speak freely about estrangements, abuse, and complex familial relationships.) “I had an extreme emotional response. I kicked a hole in the wall. It was finally real to me. And my therapist was like, ‘Your conscious brain finally accepted what your subconscious had always known, which is that your parents were always capable of disowning you. You were disposable to them all your life.’”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CDPaI8">
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That was 15 years ago, and Stephanie hasn’t been in touch with her parents since. In that time, her oldest child has gone off to college, and her youngest is now in high school. In that time, Stephanie’s siblings have tried to set similar boundaries with their parents and been similarly rejected; they have since cut off contact with their parents as well. And in that time, Stephanie has learned to rebuild her self-esteem, her faith, and her sense of self, finding new versions of them that were not dictated to her by her parents.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2u9CP0">
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When Stephanie finally cut her parents out of her life in 2006, the language she needed to talk about her decision wasn’t readily available. Even the word “boundary” wasn’t exactly part of the common lexicon. Slowly but surely, she found her way to a larger community of people who cared about her in ways that were loving and supportive, some of them in real life but many of them online.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hs0c56">
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“Now I have boundaries around, ‘I don’t care if you’re family, you can’t talk to me that way.’ I guess that’s pretty good,” she says. “There’s grief around not being loved. But there’s also the joy and promise of finding loving people. They’re everywhere. They don’t have to be your blood relatives.”
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</p>
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<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Yr3pOK"/>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yMp31B">
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We are, in 2021, somewhat more<strong> </strong>acquainted with the ways that concepts like toxic relationships and gaslighting can warp families beyond recognition and turn these bonds sinister. Many people are conscious of the idea of setting boundaries, and understand that the definition of family can be elastic enough to include, say, beloved friends. None of these ideas are new, but the language we’re using to talk about them has a clinically detached vibe that allows us to confront incredibly painful experiences with some degree of distance. It feels precise; it captures an inexact idea we know to be true in our bones: Sometimes, family isn’t worth it.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jHMPcD">
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But what do we mean when we say that? Just what is a family anyway?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dhx2Bc">
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Here’s one possible answer: Your family is the people who raised you and the people you grew up with. Usually, you were born to them, but sometimes you were adopted by them at an early age. You can think of a dozen variations on this idea, but the core of it is always the same: the nuclear family unit.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HN1SV8">
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This definition of a family has been provided to us by our culture, our storytelling, and our religious traditions for the past several centuries, and it is officially underwritten by government policy in most nations, including the United States. Just think of how many TV sitcom episodes have ended with some family patriarch reminding his children — and by proxy all of us in the audience — that family comes first, and your family will never let you down. The unshakable primacy of the family unit is one of the earliest tropes we learn.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="10iSE9">
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But it’s an idea with profound limitations.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ub5iYF">
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At the core of that idea is <em>obligation</em>. Some obligations are necessary for society to function; parents need to either care for their children or find others who will. But other obligations are messier and more prone to abusive dynamics. “Your parents raised you, so you owe them a debt you cannot repay” is all right in theory, but it starts to break down the second you consider a parent who perhaps didn’t have their child’s best interests at heart. Similarly, “family comes first” can quickly turn horrific if a member of a family abuses another, and the primary actions taken to repair the situation are aimed at preserving the family, not at helping the victim heal.
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</p>
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<div class="c-float-right">
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<aside id="Cn1cZQ">
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<q>Another model for a family already exists in American culture: the queer chosen family.</q>
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</aside>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aczn3t">
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But toxicity doesn’t have to enter the picture for our definitions of family to evolve. In an era when migrating from one’s hometown to an urban area might be the only way to find work, many families, even really good ones, are feeling the strain of trying to keep relationships alive across the distance. More and more, for those of us who have moved far away from home, our nearby friends have begun to fill family-like roles, without us ever quite defining them as such.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6oJ9lb">
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There’s a model for a family made up of people you are not related to that already exists in American culture. For a long time, queer chosen families, loose structures of people who support each other in family-like ways, have offered an alternative to the nuclear family structure, though more queer people are opting for the nuclear family structure of two parents raising children. Even as the evangelical church that dominates much of American politics actively works to reinforce a more rigid definition of family, the more loosely defined chosen family model has gained prominence.
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</p>
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<hr class="p-entry- hr" id="lqdIFL"/>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yKZOQA">
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Daniel reached a crisis point shortly before the holidays in 2019. He had broken with the evangelical church he grew up in, and in the process of therapy meant to help him work through his complicated emotions around that break, he started to uncover vague memories of childhood sexual abuse in his childhood home. He called his parents to say he was going through some intense therapy, that he and his wife wouldn’t be coming home for the holidays, and that he would check in after a few months. He’d had a good relationship with his parents before that point, but he came to feel as though that relationship had been predicated on conviviality more than anything real.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tqSYF2">
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“They never asked what was happening. They never pushed any further than, ‘Whatever space you need, take it,’” says Daniel (who asked that Vox not use his real name, out of concern of family reprisal). “My dad eventually sent me an email saying, ‘Hey, don’t email us anymore with these updates of when you think you might be ready to talk. When you’re ready to have a congenial relationship again, come back and we can talk.’ There was no, ‘What’s happening? Are you okay?’ I found that very unusual, and for me, that was an indicator that there was a lot of shit that they were avoiding.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y9SyE9">
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Daniel and his wife are both cisgender, and they’re in a heterosexual marriage. But after the break with his family, they found the most support and solace from hanging out with their queer friends, particularly a lesbian couple that lives a couple of blocks away from them in Chicago. The more time the couples spent together, the more Daniel found the kind of support and security he had found lacking in his own family.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OegIF4">
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The concept of “found” or “chosen” family is not unique to queer spaces, but it has become strongly associated with them. In the mid-20th century, queer people who had migrated to major cities began forming ersatz family structures that resembled but didn’t completely replicate the more traditional nuclear family. The creation of queer chosen families, Kath Weston writes in her landmark 1991 book <em>Families We Choose</em>, stemmed from the fact that gay and lesbian people kept migrating to particular cities. Often they had been rejected by family, but sometimes they had just left. And once they had gotten to, say, San Francisco, they would form close ties with other queer people around them. Of course they would. How could they not? It’s how human beings work.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8kexya">
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The queer chosen family became of paramount importance during the AIDS crisis, as gay men, especially, cared for each other during a time of horrifying death and devastation. These men had often been completely cut off by their families of origin, but they still sought the kind of care, empathy, and love people typically expect from a family.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bcX3sv">
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In the late 20th century, especially in the midst of the AIDS crisis, the legal recognition of these families — and how difficult it was to fit them into the existing framework of family as we knew it — became a major concern for many queer people. After all, if your lover of a decade was dying alone in a hospital, or if the homophobic biological family of a teenage runaway you were caring for returned to take them back “home,” wouldn’t you want the same sort of legal rights as a spouse or a parent?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AZjoM9">
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Weston’s book recognized how dissimilar chosen families could be to nuclear families, while also fulfilling many of the same emotional needs. Because of that dissimilarity, the mere existence of chosen families posed a threat to core assumptions about what families were. Weston writes:
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</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y2vBGj">
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Does it not make sense to argue that gay families represent an alternative form of family, a distinctive variation within a more encompassing “American kinship”? Because any alternative must be an alternative <em>to</em> something, this formulation presumes a central paradigm of family shared by most people in a society. In the United States, the nuclear family clearly represents a privileged construct, rather than one among a number of family forms accorded equivalent status.
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</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U5HHJW">
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Indeed, as queer people were afforded more acceptance within American society, our ability to fit into the nuclear family framework increased. In 2021, I can marry another woman quite easily. In California, the two of us can even adopt a child relatively easily. Neither of those things would have been easy or even possible 40 years ago. However, there’s still less recourse for legal recognition of, say, a polyamorous triad or a loose commune of queer people raising children collectively.
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</p>
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<div class="c-float- right">
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<aside id="1AN0ke">
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<q>“Does it not make sense to argue that gay families represent an alternative form of family, a distinctive variation within a more encompassing ‘American kinship’?”</q>
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</aside>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uwSuEw">
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“Vanilla queerness is something that’s pretty acceptable now with many older generations and families. But when you start thinking about the forms of sexual identity and sexual practices that are still understood as marginal or deviant or somehow unhealthy in the mainstream, you come to this threshold where that isn’t considered acceptable,” says Aren Aizura, an associate professor of gender, women, and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RWvTmM">
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“Queer and trans sex workers have been instrumental to creating queer community because they can’t come out to their biological families as doing sex work,” Aizura explains. “It’s similar for people who are involved in kink communities. So if it’s something that is an everyday part of your life that is difficult to reveal to family, then you have to organize a much wider and more comprehensive vision of queer family. Who’s the person you call when you’re sick? When you need someone to bring you food? When you need help covering rent? For sex workers, for instance, it’s often other sex workers doing mutual aid with each other.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hposak">
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Aizura adds that it’s tempting to idealize the queer chosen family, but in some cases, chosen families can also breed toxicity and abuse. Treating others poorly or spreading one’s pain outward is not exclusively reserved for cisgender, heterosexual people. It’s something we’re all capable of. Because queer chosen families are often formed by people who were ostracized by their families of origin in painful or even traumatic ways, those people can replicate that trauma within the space that was meant to offer an escape from trauma.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DMWRrj">
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The prevalence of traumatic backgrounds within queer spaces, however, makes them uniquely well-suited to discussing and processing those backgrounds. And the more that a collective awareness of how trauma operates moves into the American mainstream, the more that queer ideas about chosen family also move into the mainstream. As queer people are being granted greater legal protections, so long as our family structures replicate the nuclear family structure, it follows that cishet people are adopting more ideas about how family might consist of the friends you’re especially close to, not just your family of origin (see: the rise of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/millennials-friendsgiving-
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history/575941/">Friendsgiving</a>).
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y36Z9i">
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“When friends are moving from being really good friends to what you and they would consider chosen family, the responsibility to one another — communication, staying in touch, checking in — that changes and in a really good and meaningful way,” Daniel said of his evolving relationship with his and his wife’s friends. “But big life stuff changes too. If my wife and I decided we wanted to move and didn’t have a conversation with these folks, it would be very different than it would be even with some of our other close friends. … We joke with our [chosen family], ‘Don’t you dare think about moving without talking to us.’”
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</p>
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<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="UEm4iN"/>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SfO1eu">
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|
If the mainstream evolution toward affording chosen family structures some degree of prominence is largely thanks to the gravitational pull of the queer community, then in America, at least, the evangelical church is the other pole, trying to drag the culture back toward something more rigid and patriarchal. And while that split is expressed most dramatically in the lives of queer people, it affects many non-queer people too.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ZKbtI">
|
|||
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|
I spoke with about a dozen people who are estranged from their families and have found chosen family structures that better suit them. In all but a couple of those conversations, the evangelical Christian church or a similar conservative religious tradition came up.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XNpnPk">
|
|||
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|
“I spent well into my mid-20s thinking I couldn’t name bad things about my parents, or I somehow was dishonoring them. As a kid, as a Christian, that’s the way you make Jesus happy. You do what your parents ask you to do,” Daniel says. “I went from being a really hyperactive zero-through-6-year-old to being a picture of complacency. And some of that was the hyperactivity working its way off as I got older. But the complacency was reinforced by religious messaging in the church. So even when stuff was not okay, [you didn’t say anything]. So much of my journey over the past two years is finding the voice that I never had in my family to advocate for or protect myself. In that religious program, kids just didn’t advocate for themselves.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="38Y2nk">
|
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|
White evangelicalism in America (particularly upper-class white evangelicalism) remains defined by a rigid family structure with a father holding supremacy over a wife and both parents holding supremacy over their kids. Abuse within a culture tends to correlate with <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0020872817712566">how patriarchal that culture is</a>, and in recent years, evangelical Christian America has been beset by numerous scandals underscoring abuse within specific churches and evangelicalism more generally. (One recent example of this is <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-liberty-way-how-liberty-university-discourages-and-dismisses-students-
|
|||
|
|
reports-of-sexual-assaults">the ongoing revelations</a> about the prevalence of sexual assault at Liberty University.)
|
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|
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sjXiEj">
|
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|
What’s more, evangelical culture also revolves around the family unit as the core social organizing structure of our lives, says Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of <em>Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation</em>. Obviously, the family is a core social organizing structure in most people’s lives, but within evangelicalism, the family’s primacy outstrips even that of the government or church. That belief system leaves little recourse for, say, children growing up within abusive homes.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dr5Fjj">
|
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|
“Worst comes to worst, the church maybe can step in. So you have to bring any family issues through the church, through the elders, and in these churches, they’re all men,” Du Mez says. “So if you have sexual abuse or domestic violence, members of these communities are strongly discouraged from or even ordered against reaching out to police, to any counselors outside of their own religious community.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zw34kS">
|
|||
|
|
Within chosen family structures, however, there’s often an abundance of discussion of traumatic upbringings and rejection by families of origin, something rooted, in America at least, in the idea of the queer community building spaces where these conversations aren’t being hushed up.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OFBXjD">
|
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|
|
“It’s been really helpful to see what actual love looks like,” says Dianna Anderson, a writer from Minneapolis, who became estranged from their father over his vote for Donald Trump, despite knowing he had a queer child. (The role of Trump in family estrangements <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/03/trump-friend-family-relationships/618457/">has been frequently documented</a>.) “Coming from an evangelical context, a lot of times we’re told love is being nice to a person or still having terrible thoughts about them but not telling them, which becomes a sort of gaslighting. Whereas the queer community at its best is very much showing love in support of your identity, understanding you as an entire person, and not trying to dissect parts out.”
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-right">
|
|||
|
|
<aside id="XAFlWB">
|
|||
|
|
<q>“It’s been really helpful to see what actual love looks like”</q>
|
|||
|
|
</aside>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wQogEi">
|
|||
|
|
The divide between queer people and evangelical America has been written about endlessly, and <a href="https://religionnews.com/2021/08/06/young-evangelicals-are-leaving-
|
|||
|
|
church-resistance-to-lgbtq-equality-is-driving-them-away/">some polling suggests</a> the evangelical church’s opposition to queer identities is responsible for its falling membership rates. So it makes an ironic sort of sense that the alternative family structures Weston wrote about in 1991 now form a similar oppositional role to the drumbeat of white evangelical patriarchy, a tension that seems likely to grow ever more fraught.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tkrfgw">
|
|||
|
|
And yet one of the primary drivers of our redefinition of families is often much beloved by conservative evangelicals. It’s modern capitalism.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="alBZjH"/>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wxqXe9">
|
|||
|
|
One thing that tends to introduce emotional distance in families is physical distance. It gets harder and harder to maintain tight emotional bonds when people are living a long way away from each other. Once that physical distance opens up, it often also allows the mental space someone might need to reconsider toxic elements of their family of origin.<strong> </strong>And in the modern world, more <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/rural-americas-population-loss-stems-from-outmigration-not-
|
|||
|
|
deaths/2021/07/21/">people are moving away</a> from their families of origin because the jobs they want are situated in major cities, sometimes quite far away.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w25jt4">
|
|||
|
|
Ale grew up in Romania, in a conservative Catholic community. But when they were able to leave home to go to university, they opted for the United Kingdom, where they were finally able to begin exploring their gender identity in earnest. The physical distance that existed between them and their family allowed an emotional distance to grow as well.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eGlHcj">
|
|||
|
|
Now, more than a decade later, Ale is in their early 30s and maintains a relationship with their parents, but not really as themselves. They see their parents rarely, and when they talk on the phone or over video chat, their parents are addressing the child they thought they had. They are not really talking to the child they do have, because Ale doesn’t want to talk about their life with their parents. And so the relationship frays.
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0uiTbH">
|
|||
|
|
“Once a week, we’re gonna chat for about 15 to 20 minutes on FaceTime, and I will ask them probably the same stuff, and I will reveal nothing about my life,” Ale says. “‘Yeah, work is really busy. Always is. Stuff is fine. Here are the cats, aren’t they cute? I’m seeing some friends. We’re gonna hang out.’ That’s it. Nothing further ever gets explained.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QtlS4c">
|
|||
|
|
Can you call this an estrangement? Technically, it’s not. Ale still dutifully talks to their parents every so often. But their journey toward accepting their queerness drove a wedge between them and their parents that their parents are unaware is even present. Ale has thought about coming out to them but feels that would likely end the relationship.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uZQiDb">
|
|||
|
|
This sort of not-an- estrangement estrangement is far more common, in my experience, than outright cutting one’s family out of one’s life. I no longer speak with my own parents, for example, but I spent most of my adult life dutifully calling them every so often to talk about matters of no great importance. When I did try to be honest with them about my transness, the relationship collapsed because my parents chose a phantom son over the daughter they actually had. But even before that, the relationship didn’t really exist because I wasn’t ever being honest with my parents or myself. We were performing the rituals of family, not actually honoring a real connection.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CPQg9e">
|
|||
|
|
One doesn’t need to embrace a queer identity for simple physical distance to create a gap between family members. It’s really hard to maintain relationships across geography, even in a modern era of instant communication. You’re much more likely to form close relationships with people you see all the time, and you’re more likely to see people all the time if they live in close proximity to you.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3trAoB">
|
|||
|
|
Thus, the simple act of migration is a major factor in our modern reconceptualization of the family. Modern capitalism has devalued rural and suburban areas, siphoning more and more kids who grew up there into metropolitan areas, often on the coasts. And if you’re moving from, say, South Dakota to Los Angeles, as I did, you are slowly but surely going to feel the influence of the place you grew up start to wane. The money is on the coasts, so kids move there, while parents stay behind. And relationships fracture.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="trVyy4">
|
|||
|
|
And this shift has implications beyond the slow fraying of parent-child bonds when neither side is particularly active in trying to keep them alive. If you grew up in an abusive family structure 100 years ago, you were highly unlikely to be able to leave it, which would mean you would more or less come to accept it as normal. When you can leave that structure and move away, you might find yourself coming to accept that the way you were raised was pretty messed up. Drawing boundaries with toxic family members is far easier when you have half a continent to act as the ultimate boundary for you.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="HZ7fpx"/>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FbXxpB">
|
|||
|
|
Stephanie’s children are reaching the age where, if they so choose, they could cut her out of their lives. She doesn’t expect them to do this. She doesn’t want them to do this. She believes she has a good relationship with them. But her own experience with her parents has convinced her that she owes her children so much, and they owe her very little.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dSftSU">
|
|||
|
|
“I once had a counselor say, ‘You don’t owe your parents anything.’ And when she said that to me, I was in a place where that was hard to let sink in. And she said, ‘Well, look at it this way: Would you say that <em>your</em> children owe you anything?’ And I was immediately like, ‘No! Absolutely not!’” Stephanie says. “[As a parent], you only really need to be good enough. But the bare minimum of being good enough is equality and treating your child like a human and not expecting them to tend to your narcissistic injuries.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bcKuwz">
|
|||
|
|
We’ve all grown up immersed in a culture that insists, at all turns, that family comes first, that your family will always be there for you, that the worst thing you could do is turn your back on your family.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="31Kkbw">
|
|||
|
|
But we also know how untrue that is. We know families can be broken in millions of different ways and even the most loving families have moments of dysfunction. That’s not a reason to abandon the idea of family altogether. Of course not. But maybe it is an argument to expand the definition of family from “the people I’m related to” to “the people who come first, the people who will always be there for me, the people I will never turn my back on.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uuwJ63">
|
|||
|
|
Or, to put it more simply: Sometimes, your family isn’t your family, and that’s okay.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BPkHbO">
|
|||
|
|
So maybe there’s a better model to build our families around. I asked those I interviewed for this article who are estranged from their families what characteristic they believe is most crucial to the definition of family. To my surprise, nobody said love. Instead, the theme that came up the most often was that of safety, of security, of having a place to be yourself without fear or consequence.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oLLrlW">
|
|||
|
|
“This is very schmaltzy, but: Who feels like home to you? Family should be who feels like home. There are definitely people who I just click with and feel safe with and resonate with. Not all of them but parts of them,” Stephanie says. “And I’m learning to lead with that more and more. Your intuition is never wrong.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NahYRb">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://www.vox.com/authors/emily-
|
|||
|
|
vanderwerff"><em>Emily VanDerWerff</em></a><em> is a critic at large for Vox. </em>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div>
|
|||
|
|
<div id="FxqKCU">
|
|||
|
|
<div>
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The best $78.51 I ever spent: A knife just like my grandfather’s</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="A hunting knife and its leather holder on green background." src="https://cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/thumbor/bVehZuxo03B8qwyBO2zDWQlyxD4=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70192000/Knife.0.jpg"/>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Dana Rodriguez for Vox
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption></figure></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
I didn’t know where the original had wound up, so I went in search of my own.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Taoe0Q">
|
|||
|
|
I first learned whittling at 6 years old, holding my grandpa’s beloved hunting knife with so much caution you would have thought it was a venomous snake. We’d been on the back porch of my grandparents’ home in Young Harris, Georgia, with the Blue Ridge Mountains cradling everything they could hold in every direction you looked.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MFik03">
|
|||
|
|
He’d taught me the basics of it all, where to keep my hands in relation to the blade, the speed at which I should go, and how judiciousness should never be sacrificed to the sheer joy of seeing the wood pull away from itself in angry curls. Rather than setting me off to carve a bear or even something unimaginative like a fox, he’d simply told me to whittle the wood off of the pine branch he’d given me and that we’d take it from there.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w4ZN7I">
|
|||
|
|
My grandfather, a life-long raccoon pelt trader, had traded for this knife years prior. Even at that young age, I’d committed to memory that the old man was an expert knife trader. Disinterested in flashy designs with antlers for handles, he could spot reliability almost instantly and never once got cheated out of a cent. Whatever he exchanged for this knife, I knew he had not traded poorly.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Vth4sO"/>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y26M7I">
|
|||
|
|
At the time of his death, I was 25 years old and teaching high school English in Washington, DC. I had completed my transition from male to nonbinary. I’d not lived in Appalachia in eight years and had somewhat deliberately built a life for myself as remote as possible from how I’d grown up.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J3KNzq">
|
|||
|
|
I’d been teaching when my mother called to tell me. In Appalachian Georgia, a now- defunct tradition dictated that when a person died, the church would ring the bell the number of years the person had been alive. This tradition was somber when it got up to around 20 clanging circles of iron disappearing into the sky, but if the truth were told, once you got into the 60s and 70s, it could get understandably taxing. I said nothing as I walked around my classroom watching my students busily annotate <em>House on Mango Street, </em>but I silently performed the reverberating arithmetic of 79 church bells spilling their bitter noises inside my head. And then some needy, rapacious sliver of my soul thought of his knife.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qbjz61">
|
|||
|
|
I’d never discussed my transition with my grandfather. He could show surprising tolerance for social progress when its ambassador was a member of his own family. However, my fear of what he might say in response to the concept of his eldest grandson blithely casting off the weight of maleness restricted that aspect of my life to secrecy. By that point, I only saw him once a year on Christmas, and, for all the untidy holiday conversations that filled my grandparents’ house, <a href="https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/judith-butler">Judith Butler</a> never once came up.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wH6w6d">
|
|||
|
|
From the vantage point of the environment that had raised me, my life had been something of a disappointment. While I had been and remain an enthusiastic whittler with an excellent memory for folklore and traditions, that had been the extent of my ability to perform Appalachian masculinity. I’d been bookish and had, I realized, learned nothing from my ancestry of dirt-under-the-nails and cramped trailers except to avoid it at all costs in my adulthood.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k26KMN">
|
|||
|
|
Age and experience illuminated truths about myself that stood starkly in contrast to my surroundings. I slowly began to believe that whatever future I wanted for myself, I would not find it in north Georgia. I attempted the dissection of my life into “before” and “after” Appalachia without appreciating the messiness and complexities that such an action would require.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kRTxi7">
|
|||
|
|
I left Georgia at 22 on a plane to Laguardia Airport and began teaching in the Bronx shortly after. Weekends whose vacancy might have been filled with whittling, baking, hiking, or camping on the banks of some mountain river were now filled with hours spent in the Met or meandering through basement bookstores in the Village. I got my first of two master’s degrees. I spent criminal amounts of money on funky clothes from thrift stores. I got my first boyfriend. I paid for coffee instead of brewing it because I was so perfectly pleased with my own bookishness, my own cleverness, and the self-anointed aura of mid-Atlantic sensibility that I wore like a suit of armor.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MZHnAu">
|
|||
|
|
However, just below that veneer, I was incurably homesick. The attempt at breaking from home had been messy, with bits of tendon still holding tight between two worlds. I would listen to Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Wanda Jackson on repeat. I would show up to summer potlucks with a fabulous family recipe for potato salad. Whenever I did manage to visit home for a weekend, I would fly back north with my checked bag full of jars of apple butter and peach preserves wrapped in my jeans and sweaters.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DzR8aG">
|
|||
|
|
One November weekend, I took a trip up the Hudson Highlands on MetroNorth specifically to walk a brief section of the Appalachian Trail, the same meandering spine of the East Coast that was visible from my grandparents’ porch in Georgia. As the wind blew through my coat too thin for the weather, I realized in a moment of clarity that both thrilled and disturbed me: If I walked long enough, this same stretch of trail would spit me out right back to where I’d started.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div>
|
|||
|
|
<aside id="4gDjq7">
|
|||
|
|
<q>Male heirs got first pickings of the material lives of the departed. Agender ones got whatever no one else wanted. </q>
|
|||
|
|
</aside>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QTBK03">
|
|||
|
|
Through the disorienting fog of simultaneously loving and fearing a place you once called home, one thing proved unshakably orienting in the wake of my grandfather’s death: I wanted that knife with an intensity that pawed at my insides with a vicious urgency. Due to historically higher rates of poverty in Appalachia and unreliable access to morticians, people were customarily buried as close to their deaths as possible, ideally before rigor mortis could set in. Even now when embalming is more widely practiced, a flight delay could still mean missing a funeral in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As such, I had to leave that same day my grandfather died to return to Georgia in time.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GLUPwv">
|
|||
|
|
For much of the drive, I chided myself for the backward step I knew I was taking by wanting the knife. I could imagine the funeral before I had lived it. It was January of 2016, and I knew I was driving into a world of goodwill bereavement sheet cakes and Donald Trump signs. Accepting the knife, I told myself, would be an act of self-betrayal, of taking something that would come to me only if one accepted that I was the eldest grand<em>son</em>. Male heirs got first pickings of the material lives of the departed. Agender ones got whatever no one else wanted.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w0zZuV">
|
|||
|
|
Without anyone asking, I’d been assigned to be a pallbearer, joining five men to carry the casket that contained not only my grandfather but several cans of his favorite dip (Grizzle long natural cut), a Bible, and several handguns. The coffin was such a dreadfully heavy thing that it felt like it was filled with clay. This, I’d told myself, was an act of contrition, some sort of divine punishment for so anemically accepting the part of myself I’d long since abandoned and allowing my family to temporarily mold me into the thing they still remembered me to be. If the cost of the knife was carrying my grandfather’s body to the open gash of earth in his corner of the fashionable West Union Baptist Church cemetery, I would not have traded poorly.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WhWsL2">
|
|||
|
|
The speed of mourning in Appalachia strikes those unfamiliar with it as callous, but that is not precisely true. Death, burial, and the division of the assets still subscribe to a combination of cultural fatalism, an aging population, and poor rural health care. In Appalachian Georgia, mortality follows a somewhat unemotional set of traditions that all tend to rely on the inertia of each other to ensure they are completed before grief becomes potent and clouds the judgment.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vS8W0o">
|
|||
|
|
The things my grandfather had accumulated, such as his short-sleeve button-downs still stained with tobacco juice and an extensive collection of mouse-nibbled Louis L’Amour books, spilled forth from their containers with such abundance that everyone could have more than their fair share. His remaining handguns went to his five adult children. He’d not collected jewelry or anything else of value, so the grandchildren contented themselves politely with memories of him and several snapshots kept in a shoebox as being enough of an heirloom.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9tFdwk">
|
|||
|
|
I’d assumed the bestowing of the knife would, therefore, take place privately so as not to provoke ire or the open comparison of grandchildren. Like many large families from the area, mine is as loving as it is fiercely competitive. Game nights and pick-up games of basketball had ways of working toward shouting and profanity before ending with guttural belly laughs. Perceived slights and score-settling mixed with compassion and intimacy between us to a point where the flavors became difficult to distinguish.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WjFga7">
|
|||
|
|
However, no one pulled me aside to silently place the knife in my pocket and wordlessly signal to me to put it in the car before anyone noticed. At first, I’d feared the worst, that someone had put the knife in the casket, and I’d stupidly carried it myself to its interment. For all I know, this could have been the truth. My next hypothesis was that it had gone to one of the two younger male cousins he was objectively closer to and who had hunted with him much more than I had; like my first theory, though, this had no basis in evidence.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1pKKxn">
|
|||
|
|
My father, himself a middle child, seemed like the best ally when it came to a direct answer. When I returned home for Easter two months later, I asked him if he knew what became of the knife, and my father stated plainly that nobody seemed to know where it was. He was kind about it, but he clearly did not understand my urgency.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZMrTGT">
|
|||
|
|
The grief I felt for the loss of it in and of itself felt absurd and regressive. I had no real use for masculine trappings like hunting knives. I could whittle just as well with a Swiss army knife that I could buy brand new if I so desired. However, as I sat with the maelstrom of loss and self-admonishment for fixating on something so trivial as an old hunting blade, the awful truth of its absence became increasingly clear. The knife was the reminder of a home I no longer wanted and one that no longer wanted me. It was the summation of my evolution from a sensitive child who wished nothing more than praise for their cleverness at scraping away the fibers of wood curl by curl until they were satisfied with what was left to what I was then: a person who had so deeply loved a place that had been a home until it wasn’t. The knife would have been a private talisman, a discreet relic I could place in a drawer when I was done with it that would constantly remind me of a life I so deeply loved and reviled at the same time.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
|
|||
|
|
<aside id="vvvnsl">
|
|||
|
|
<q>The knife was the reminder of a home I no longer wanted and one that no longer wanted me</q>
|
|||
|
|
</aside>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W7RB2c">
|
|||
|
|
Several months passed, and I fluctuated between feeling the increasing national dread surrounding the 2016 election and the feeling that the one heirloom I most wanted had been pulled from my hands. Unable to simply accept that for all intents and purposes the knife had died right along with my grandfather, I searched frantically on every online market and bidding site I could find for an exact replica of it, down to the fading on the handle and the parts of the case that had worn through the patina of the leather casing. I imagined the men who were selling them. Hunters? Veterans? Men who, like my grandfather, were spending their final years shedding the memories of things they could no longer do? If they knew my reasons for wanting it, would they still sell it to me?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hRvKDx">
|
|||
|
|
In the end, I purchased one on eBay for $78.51 using the “buy it now” option rather than bidding for it. If my grandfather were alive, he’d have been disgusted at my poor trading, at the foolish sum of money I’d pissed away on a knife that was not even new without even attempting to lowball the seller first. He’d never have been fleeced like that, not in a million years, no matter how close to death he had been, and we both knew it.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hWdhn3">
|
|||
|
|
I held the imposter knife in my hands as soon as it arrived, trying to see the greatness in the blade that my grandfather had seen in its twin. I sharpened the blade as I’d intended, staring at my distorted reflection in it as Isaac might have looked at the infant Jacob as he clasped to Esau’s heel. I sat down to whittle from a block of wood that I’d purchased at a craft store; it didn’t smell like anything. With the third stroke, I sliced neatly into the meat of my finger. As the taste of earth and copper filled my mouth from the wound I instinctively brought to my lips, I found myself more homesick than I’d ever been.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LsiWkn">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Coyote Shook is a cartoonist and disability studies scholar living in Austin, Texas.</em>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Why Democrats shouldn’t cut paid leave from their social spending bill</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="Adults and children carrying umbrellas over their heads gather on the US Capitol lawn carrying
|
|||
|
|
signs that read, “Families demand paid leave,” and, “Save paid leave!”" src="https://cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/thumbor/6FrVZOb7-cf-_BGd7nVAuKwEZjc=/907x0:8192x5464/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70191904/GettyImages_1350894158.0.jpg"/>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Families, parents, and caregivers rally in front of the US Capitol to call on Congress to include paid family and medical leave in the ‘Build Back Better’ legislative package on November 2. | Paul Morigi/Getty Images for PL+US
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
If passed, it would be transformative for women’s workplace participation and economic growth.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pnT7zE">
|
|||
|
|
The need for paid leave has only become more clear during the pandemic.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bq15JE">
|
|||
|
|
In the last two years, workers have been forced to juggle caregiving, sick leave, and professional responsibilities, often facing impossible choices among all three. Many women, who’ve borne the brunt of these demands, have reduced their involvement in the workforce or left it altogether.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IsxV7F">
|
|||
|
|
Democrats hope to tackle these issues with a new measure included in their <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/19/22776638/house-democrats-pass-185-trillion-social-spending-bill">Build Back Better Act</a>. It passed the House of Representatives last week, and would guarantee US workers four weeks of paid family and sick leave, a major protection that <a href="https://americanprogress.org/article/urgent-case-permanent-paid-
|
|||
|
|
leave/">millions of people don’t currently have</a>. At the moment, however, the provision’s chances of passing the Senate are uncertain given pushback from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — and the narrow margins the party has to advance legislation.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZOEqiD">
|
|||
|
|
The US’s recent loss of women workers has been striking. At the start of the pandemic, 3.5 million moms of school-age children temporarily or permanently left their jobs, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2021-11-04/burned-out-why-wont-more-women-return-to-the-job-
|
|||
|
|
market">according to the Associated Press</a>. As of this fall, one in three women said they’ve considered leaving the workforce or “downshifting” their jobs, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-
|
|||
|
|
inclusion/women-in-the-workplace">according to a McKinsey study</a>. And per data from <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/08/economy/us-women-jobs-recovery/index.html">the Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>, thousands of women still haven’t returned to the labor force after departing during the pandemic.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T06y6f">
|
|||
|
|
There’s a host of reasons for these departures, but as <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22568635/women-
|
|||
|
|
remote-work-home">Vox’s Rani Molla has reported</a>, women are far more likely than men to have significant caregiving responsibilities. And these responsibilities have surged during the pandemic, when many women have taken on caregiving for their school-age children and sick family members.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kn6gT6">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/19/22776638/house-democrats-pass-185-trillion-social-spending-bill">The Build Back Better Act</a> tries to help workers balance caregiving responsibilities, and sick leave, with work. The $1.85 trillion legislation boosts funding for child care, and makes a roughly $205 billion (over 10 years) investment in a new federal paid family and sick leave program.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BMOPJZ">
|
|||
|
|
By itself, the program is far from enough to address the needs that workers face, and it won’t go into effect until 2024, but if enacted it could eventually help keep more women in the workforce.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f6i4wH">
|
|||
|
|
The US is the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/upshot/paid-leave-
|
|||
|
|
democrats.html">only industrialized country</a> without a comprehensive federal paid leave program, meaning workers only have access to such protections if their company or state happens to offer them. <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2020/employee-benefits-in-the-united-states-
|
|||
|
|
march-2020.pdf#page=299">According to 2020 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,</a> just 20 percent of workers have access to paid family leave, and just 75 percent have access to paid sick leave, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/29/22749595/paid-leave-sick-parental-leave-biden-build-back-better-bill">numbers that are even lower for low-wage workers</a>. Among lower-wage workers, 8 percent have access to paid family leave, and 49 percent have access to paid sick leave.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Vx3Ajg">
|
|||
|
|
The effects of this federal program could be substantial: In addition to boosting women’s participation in the workforce, existing paid leave programs have been found to reduce families’ food insecurity, improve children’s health outcomes, and reduce worker turnover.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="scUOTH">
|
|||
|
|
For it to become a reality, however, the legislation still needs to make it through the Senate.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="6GkyDO">
|
|||
|
|
How people would be able to access paid leave under BBB
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ht70hw">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/Section_by_Section_BBB_RCP117-18__.pdf">The program,</a> which would officially launch in 2024, would guarantee four weeks (or 20 workdays) of paid family and sick leave for most workers each year.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L0mx0e">
|
|||
|
|
To qualify for the program, workers will need to have made at least $2,000 over the two years prior to their application for the leave. It’s a threshold that could exclude low-wage workers unable to work consistently because of caregiving responsibilities or other reasons, but New America paid leave expert Vicki Shabo notes that it would include the overwhelming majority of workers.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<aside id="bE7EZG">
|
|||
|
|
<div>
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
</aside>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s3fweB">
|
|||
|
|
The program also aims to cover workers left out of the existing Family and Medical Leave Act program, which guarantees the ability to take unpaid leave. Because of the way it’s written, FMLA doesn’t currently apply to a swath of smaller employers and certain part-time workers, exceptions this new proposal would avoid. The House paid leave policy is also accessible to people who are self-employed and members of the gig economy, as long as they meet the earnings eligibility requirements.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SLdyic">
|
|||
|
|
“Anybody that satisfies that earnings and work history requirement would be eligible, and that would be critical because the very people that are left out of FMLA are the ones in the most precarious position,” Shabo says.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R8j8bG">
|
|||
|
|
The money paid to workers would be distributed through a couple different channels. The federal government would set up a new program run by the Social Security Administration, through which people could submit applications if their states and employers don’t already provide paid leave. To apply through the federal program, workers would have to submit their leave requests up to 90 days before they take leave, or up to 90 days after they do so.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4njuX7">
|
|||
|
|
Workers whose state or employer already have paid leave programs in place would continue to receive benefits through these channels. The federal government would then reimburse those states and companies.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kuIzTY">
|
|||
|
|
This policy design is intended to fill in current gaps while making sure companies and states that already offer paid leave programs aren’t disincentivized from doing so. The availability of these programs is pretty inconsistent right now: Nine states and the District of Columbia have implemented some form of paid family and sick leave, and roughly 25 percent of employers offer paid family leave while 68 percent provide paid sick leave, <a href="https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-
|
|||
|
|
sheet/paid-family-leave-and-sick-days-in-the-u-s/">according to 2019 and 2017 Kaiser Family Foundation surveys</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xdGh6F">
|
|||
|
|
The benefits a worker on leave would receive depends on their prior wages, and could be as much as 90 percent of what they were making. Workers would receive 90 percent of the first $290 they make per week, 73 percent of their next $290 to $659, and 53 percent of any additional wages between $659 and $1,192. Democrats designed the policy this way to ensure low-wage workers received the support they needed — and the highest proportion of wage replacement.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ljQK7D">
|
|||
|
|
Overall, the maximum amount that a worker is able to receive is capped at $814 a week, or $3,256 for all four weeks.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dUsvCM">
|
|||
|
|
While past Democratic proposals have paid for this benefit using a payroll tax, the House’s program will be fully covered by revenue raisers like a new corporate minimum tax rate and a new tax on stock buybacks. The program currently isn’t slated to sunset, and could run indefinitely if the revenue raisers proposed continue to cover its costs.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vPVHsh">
|
|||
|
|
Four weeks of paid leave would put the US at the lower end of the spectrum relative to other countries: Although programs vary, the global average is 29 weeks of paid maternity leave and 16 weeks of paid paternity leave, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/upshot/paid-leave-
|
|||
|
|
democrats.html">according to the New York Times</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="06hcJO">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/upshot/paid-parental-leave-sweet-spot-six-months-gates.html">Previous research</a> of other country’s programs found around six months to be the ideal period of time for family leave, specifically, because it allows parents to bond with their children without facing the professional backlash that a longer duration of leave can result in.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zhrwf3">
|
|||
|
|
The economic effects of a federal program could also be considerable. <a href="https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/to-build-back-better-paid-family-leave-must-support-
|
|||
|
|
work/#:~:text=Women%20who%20take%20paid%20family,women%20who%20quit%20during%20pregnancy.">According to the Bipartisan Policy Center,</a> women who take paid family leave are 40 percent more likely to return to work after a new child than those who do not, meaning these programs could keep a whole group of people in the workforce, boosting economic growth. <a href="https://americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-sent-womens-workforce-progress-backward/">The Center for American Progress</a> has estimated that the longer-term effects of women’s departures during the pandemic could be as much as $64.5 billion in lost wages and economic activity each year.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FD9Kbw">
|
|||
|
|
“New mothers, in particular, and caregivers to seriously ill loved ones are more likely to return to work if they have access to paid leave,” Shabo says.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="VzlpdL">
|
|||
|
|
Opposition from the Senate could wind up killing the paid leave plan
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hf37iG">
|
|||
|
|
Paid leave is facing a steep challenge in the Senate. Joe Manchin, a key moderate, has repeatedly questioned whether this policy should be included in the budget bill.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rbKdRy">
|
|||
|
|
His concerns have led Democrats to pare down their original plans of a 12-week paid leave program modeled after one Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has been pushing for years.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/thumbor/O8Pzbo4PkXTp83q8WDnsrRhyO0c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23040069/GettyImages_1347952953.jpg"/> <cite>Paul Morigi/Getty Images for MomsRising Together</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand speaks at a press conference supporting Build Back Better investments in home care, child care, paid leave and expanded CTC payments on October 21.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sY2qW8">
|
|||
|
|
Part of Manchin’s problem with the policy is that he feels reconciliation isn’t the process that should be used to pass this measure. As the bill contains so many social and climate spending proposals that Republicans are against, Democrats are trying to pass it through reconciliation, which requires only majority support in both houses of Congress. Because Democrats have 50 votes in the Senate, with Manchin aboard, they could pass paid leave, and everything else in the Build Back Better Act, without a single GOP vote.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o6ICAy">
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“I don’t think it belongs in the bill,” <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/04/politics/joe-manchin-democrats-spending-bill-
|
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|
|
cnntv/index.html">Manchin said in a CNN interview in early November</a>. “We can do that in a bipartisan way. We can make sure it’s lasting.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HGmIzu">
|
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Up to this point, attempts to find a bipartisan approach for paid leave have failed.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MlsKK4">
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Historically, there have been disagreements over how to pay for the legislation, with Democrats advocating for a payroll tax to cover its costs, while Republicans have pushed for people to borrow from their future Social Security benefits. Additionally, there have been conflicts over whether the program should require employer participation or whether it should be voluntary. During the Trump administration, Ivanka Trump’s attempts at a paid leave program wound up largely floundering as well, though they did contribute to Congress approving paid leave for federal employees.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6pmiUv">
|
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Because of Manchin’s concerns, paid leave may well be removed from the Build Back Better Act or cut significantly. And that would be a great loss for millions of workers.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vzV4pR">
|
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Gillibrand has said that she’s hopeful a paid leave provision will wind up in the legislation — even if it’s a narrower one than the House included.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dkxr3O">
|
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“I think Sen. Manchin and I can come together hopefully in the next couple of weeks on something that could be included in this package that would be a Democratic-only proposal that we could start with, something modest, perhaps,” Gillibrand <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-
|
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|
|
shows/582539-gillibrand-manchin-has-come-a-long-way-on-paid-leave">said in a CBS interview last weekend</a>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BZXQDi">
|
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One way lawmakers could curb the program further is to limit how long it would last, perhaps setting a specific deadline for the program to sunset, for example. They could also slash the number of weeks the benefit would cover, or apply <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/15/22722418/means-testing-social-spending-reconciliation-
|
|||
|
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bill">means testing</a> to exclude workers making over a certain amount.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a3hWck">
|
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|
|
Were the proposal to be removed, it would leave millions of workers exactly where they are now: forced to choose between caregiving and their own health and income, even as the US continues to navigate a devastating pandemic.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
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|
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
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<ul>
|
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|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Beemer shines</strong> - Beemer shone when the horses were exercised here on Friday (Nov. 26) morning.Sand track:600m: Fidato (Dashrath), Ciplad (Hamir) 38. They ended level.8</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>He is not bowling so can we call him all-rounder? asks Kapil Dev on Hardik Pandya</strong> - When asked about his favourite all-rounders, Kapil named Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IND vs NZ Day 2 | Dogged start by New Zealand openers after Southee five-for</strong> - Shreyas Iyer scores ton on debut, five for Tim Southee</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Shreyas Iyer becomes 16th Indian to slam hundred on Test debut</strong> - The elegant right-hander, who hails from Mumbai’s Worli area, achieved the feat in the ongoing first Test against New Zealand on the second day of the match</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tim Paine takes indefinite mental health break from cricket</strong> - Cricket Australia, which named fast bowler Pat Cummins as Paine’s replacement on November 26, said Paine advised them he would be “stepping away from cricket for a period of time.”</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RBI statement on cooperative sector: Kerala Government to consult legal experts</strong> - The Kerala Government plans to approach the RBI in an attempt to convince it of the special role, activities and importance of the cooperative sector in the State, says Minister for Cooperation V. N. Vasavan</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘Visva-Bharati lagging in research work, quality assessment’</strong> - Accreditation Council also not happy with performance of university’s Internal Quality Assessment Committee</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Farmers in hundreds descend at protest sites to mark anniversary</strong> - On Friday morning, farmers held special prayers to pay tributes to those who died during the course of the protest.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Funds for repair works</strong> - The State government has given its nod for spending a sum of ₹2.20 crore for carrying out works at the parade grounds of Karnataka Police Academy in M</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Women police on night patrol</strong> - The Mysuru District Police took up a new initiative, perhaps the first time in the district, of deploying all women police personnel for night patroll</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Channel migrants: Macron attacks Johnson in boat crossings row</strong> - The French President accuses the PM of not being “serious” over call for France to take back migrants.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clashes as protesters demand end to violence against women</strong> - Three are shot dead in Mexico and police fire tear gas in Turkey in rallies over gender-based violence.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Channel deaths: More boats arrive after 27 people drown</strong> - Around 40 migrants arrived in Dover this morning but strong winds halt crossings in the afternoon.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Russian coal mine: Death toll soars to 52 after accident - reports</strong> - A search for survivors of a Siberian mine accident turns to tragedy, with rescuers among the dead.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>UAE general accused of torture elected Interpol president</strong> - Ahmed al-Raisi was chosen despite facing claims of complicity in torture by UAE security forces.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>All the best Black Friday 2021 deals we can find</strong> - We’ve cut through the Black Friday noise to find the deals worth your time. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1815967">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The 9 best deals on noise-canceling headphones we’re seeing for Black Friday</strong> - Including deals on recommended noise cancelers from Sony, Apple, Bose, and more. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1815725">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Will glow-in-the-dark materials someday light our cities?</strong> - Photoluminescent substances could be applied to sidewalks, streets, and buildings. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1815878">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Scientists use seismic noise to image first hundred meters of Mars</strong> - Mars’ winds create enough noise to see what’s underneath the InSight lander. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1815759">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Some of our favorite smartwatches and fitness trackers are on sale for Black Friday</strong> - Many of our top wearable picks are seeing strong discounts this week. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1815101">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>My 10 year old son made this one up. Why doesn’t a snowman wear snow pants?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Because his snow balls are too big.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ad1das97"> /u/ad1das97 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r2bt9t/my_10_year_old_son_made_this_one_up_why_doesnt_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r2bt9t/my_10_year_old_son_made_this_one_up_why_doesnt_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Henry, you are 97 years old…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Henry, you are 97 years old, what’s your secret?
|
|||
|
|
</li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
well I sucked a penis once for 20 dollars
|
|||
|
|
</li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
uh… I mean what’s your secret to long life?
|
|||
|
|
</li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Eating a lot of vegetables and fruits
|
|||
|
|
</li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/redgreenandblue"> /u/redgreenandblue </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r27yep/henry_you_are_97_years_old/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r27yep/henry_you_are_97_years_old/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>The King of France, The King of England and The King of Spain are having an argument over who has the biggest penis.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Eventually they decide to let the people judge. They all stand on a stage in front of the people and drop their pants one by one.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The King of France drops his and the French crowd shout “Viva la France!!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The King of Spain drops his and the Spanish crowd shout “Viva la España!!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The King of England drops his, but there is a long silence from the crowd, and then everybody shouts “God save the Queen!!!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Waitsfornoone"> /u/Waitsfornoone </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r1yfrz/the_king_of_france_the_king_of_england_and_the/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r1yfrz/the_king_of_france_the_king_of_england_and_the/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>An engineer and an anti-vaxxer were walking through the woods.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
An engineer and an anti-vaxxer were walking through the woods when they came upon a bridge across a crocodile infested river.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The anti-vaxxer asked the engineer “What are the odds of us making it across that bridge safely?” The engineer took out his calculator and his tape measure, did a structural analysis and said "There is a 99.97% chance we’ll make it across that bridge safely.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The anti-vaxxer responded, without even thinking “Forget that, I’m swimming!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/liquidporkchops"> /u/liquidporkchops </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r242bg/an_engineer_and_an_antivaxxer_were_walking/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r242bg/an_engineer_and_an_antivaxxer_were_walking/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Tesla founder Elon Musk is originally from South Africa, which is strange</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
You’d think he was from mad-at-gas-car.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/DamTrig"> /u/DamTrig </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r2fb6d/tesla_founder_elon_musk_is_originally_from_south/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/r2fb6d/tesla_founder_elon_musk_is_originally_from_south/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>
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