I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they’re male is sexist as fuck.
I never take this into account. I do read a lot of books by white male authors, but that’s not planned or anything; I just read the books that sound good to me. The author’s gender or ethnicity doesn’t really factor into my wanting of reading the book.
Exactly. I judge a book purely by its content.
No, you don’t. You operate within the same system as the rest of us, which is the one that packs the shelves with books by men, codes those books as being better when written by men, skews best books list to favor male writers, and disproportionately gives top writing awards and commercial success to white male writers. Female writers’ success is often restricted to YA or romance, both genres considered to be inferior to literary fiction, where male writers dominate. Female and minority writers are told their experience is not universal and will only be appreciated by other women and minorities, while men are considered the default experience and told everyone can appreciate their writing. All of that means you don’t judge a book solely by its content. You judge it through the same prism as the rest of us, and it’s a prism that happens to bring men into focus and blur out women and minorities.
Upholding a system that puts men above women is sexist. Choosing to opt out of that system is not.
The auxiliary water pump on my car broke (the plastic rotted and cracked so it was spewing coolant everywhere) and the mechanic wanted me to pay $300 for a $150 part.
I went to an auto store and bought the part for just under $150 and was gonna have the mechanic install it until I called them back and they said they don’t install customer parts.
So I figured if they won’t install customer parts, they’ll at least fix existing problems with the vehicle.
So, naturally I poorly installed the new part myself, then took it to the mechanic saying I had coolant issues and wasn’t sure what the problem was. They fixed the problem in under 20 minutes and only charged me $30 for the labor.
Ho l y
Imma try that last one
I went to my doctor’s office and asked if they had any slots open for that day. They told me they don’t take walk-ins, you have to call ahead for an appointment.
So I pulled out my phone and called the office. The other receptionist answered the phone and the first one literally WATCHED ME say “I’d like to make an appointment today if you have any slots available.”
He said to me (on the phone) all they had available was for 9:00, could I make it in time?
I said “Yep, I’m standing right here.”
He didn’t understand what I meant and happily put my appointment down.
I hung up and said to the original receptionist, “Hi, I have an appointment in five minutes.”
She (very angrily) entered me as arrived and gave me my forms.
I think a lot about who I am to other people in the world–particular who I am to strangers as a mere concept in their lives.
Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”
And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.
Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.
“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”
They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”
And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.
And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.
I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.
Because treating people fairly often means treating them differently.
This is something that I teach my students during the first week of school and they understand it. Eight year olds can understand this and all it costs is a box of band-aids.
I have each students pretend they got hurt and need a band-aid. Children love band-aids. I ask the first one where they are hurt. If he says his finger, I put the band-aid on his finger. Then I ask the second one where they are hurt. No matter what that child says, I put the band-aid on their finger exactly like the first child. I keep doing that through the whole class. No matter where they say their pretend injury is, I do the same thing I did with the first one.
After they all have band-aids in the same spot, I ask if that actually helped any of them other than the first child. I say, “Well, I helped all of you the same! You all have one band-aid!” And they’ll try to get me to understand that they were hurt somewhere else. I act like I’m just now understanding it. Then I explain, “There might be moments this year where some of you get different things because you need them differently, just like you needed a band-aid in a different spot.”
If at any time any of my students ask why one student has a different assignment, or gets taken out of the class for a subject, or gets another teacher to come in and help them throughout the year, I remind my students of the band-aids they got at the start of the school year and they stop complaining. That’s why eight year olds can understand equity.
I found this thing on Facebook… and I fell down the Humans Are Weird hole yet again. 😂(I first did before I even started my blog – Pinterest is sooo full of these posts! And I keep falling down it from time to time, when I discover something new)
Writing is a rough gig. Get paid where you can. Here’s a bunch of places that will pay professional rates for genre (fantasy/science fiction/horror) short stories. All these markets take (and actually publish) unsolicited submissions – you don’t need an agent, and you don’t need to have previously published works.
Remember to format your shit, write a simple cover letter, don’t send the same story to more than one place at a time, make sure submissions windows are actually open, and never respond to rejection letters ever. Have fun!
(Information gathered from both Submissions Grinder – an essential resource for people actively submitting their work – and my own excessive and somewhat ridiculous reading habits.)
Current as of May 2018. Markets are listed alphabetically. Detailed info below the cut.
C.A. Jacobs
C.A. Jacobs 