I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs upstairs to tell his mother that I bit him. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about the penis part, so they all just think I bit him for no reason.
I get in trouble first at the babysitter’s house, then later at home.
The next time the babysitter’s son tries to show me his penis, I don’t fight back because I don’t want to get in trouble.
One day I tell the babysitter what her son does, she tells me that he’s just a little boy, he doesn’t know any better. I can tell that she’s angry at me, and I don’t know why. Later that day, when my mother comes to pick me up, the babysitter hugs me too hard and says how jealous she is because she only has sons and she wishes she had a daughter as sweet as me.
One day when we’re playing in the backyard he tells me very seriously that he might kill me one day and I believe him.
2.
I am in the second grade and our classroom has a weird open-concept thing going on, and the fourth wall is actually the hallway to the gym. All day long, we surreptitiously watch the other grades file past on the way to and from the gym. We are supposed to ignore most of them. The only class we are not supposed to ignore is Monsieur Pierre’s grade six class.
Every time Monsieur Pierre walks by, we are supposed to chorus “Bonjour, Monsieur Sexiste.” We are instructed to do this by our impossibly beautiful teacher, Madame Lemieux. She tells us that Monsieur Pierre, a dapper man with grey hair and a moustache, is sexist because he won’t let the girls in his class play hockey. She is the first person I have ever heard use the word sexist.
The word sounds very serious when she says it. She looks around the class to make sure everyone is paying attention and her voice gets intense and sort of tight.
“Girls can play hockey. Girls can do anything that boys do,” she tells us.
We don’t really believe her. For one thing, girls don’t play hockey. Everyone in the NHL – including our hero Mario Lemieux, who we sometimes whisper might be our teacher’s brother or cousin or even husband – is a boy. But we accept that maybe sixth grade girls can play hockey in gym class, so we do what she asks.
Mostly what I remember is the smile that spreads across Monsieur Pierre’s face whenever we call him a sexist. It is not the smile of someone who is ashamed; it is the smile of someone who finds us adorable in our outrage.
3.
Later that same year a man walks into Montreal’s École Polytechnique and kills fourteen women. He kills them because he hates feminists. He kills them because they are going to be engineers, because they go to school, because they take up space. He kills them because he thinks they have stolen something that is rightfully his. He kills them because they are women.
Everything about the day is grey: the sky, the rain, the street, the concrete side of the École Polytechnique, the pictures of the fourteen girls that they print in the newspaper. My mother’s face is grey. It’s winter, and the air tastes like water drunk from a tin cup.
Madame Lemieux doesn’t tell us to call Monsieur Pierre a sexist anymore. Maybe he lets the girls play hockey now. Or maybe she is afraid.
Girls can do anything that boys do but it turns out that sometimes they get killed for it.
4.
I am fourteen and my classmate’s mother is killed by her boyfriend. He stabs her to death. In the newspaper they call it a crime of passion. When she comes back to school, she doesn’t talk about it. When she does mention her mother it’s always in the present tense – “my mom says” or “my mom thinks” – as if she is still alive. She transfers schools the next year because her father lives across town in a different school district.
Passion. As if murder is the same thing as spreading rose petals on your bed or eating dinner by candlelight or kissing through the credits of a movie.
5.
Men start to say things to me on the street, sometimes loudly enough that everyone around us can hear, but not always. Sometimes they mutter quietly, so that I’m the only one who knows. So that if I react, I’ll seem like I’m blowing things out of proportion or flat-out making them up. These whispers make me feel complicit in something, although I don’t quite know what.
I feel like I deserve it. I feel like I am asking for it. I feel dirty and ashamed.
I want to stand up for myself and tell these men off, but I am afraid. I am angry that I’m such a baby about it. I feel like if I were braver, they wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Eventually I screw up enough courage and tell a man to leave me alone; I deliberately keep my voice steady and unemotional, trying to make it sound more like a command than a request. He grabs my wrist and calls me a fucking bitch.
After that I don’t talk back anymore. Instead I just smile weakly; sometimes I duck my head and whisper thank you. I quicken my steps and hurry away until one time a man yells don’t you fucking run away and starts to follow me.
After that I always try to keep my pace even, my breath slow. Like how they tell you that if you ever see a bear you shouldn’t run, you should just slowly back away until he can’t see you.
I think that these men, like dogs, can smell my fear.
6.
On my eighteenth birthday my cousin takes me out clubbing. While we’re dancing, a man comes up behind me and starts fiddling with the straps on my flouncy black dress. But he’s sort of dancing with me and this is my first time ever at a club and I want to play it cool, so I don’t say anything. Then he pulls the straps all the way down and everyone laughs as I scramble to cover my chest.
At a concert a man comes up behind me and slides his hand around me and starts playing with my nipple while he kisses my neck. By the time I’ve got enough wiggle room to turn around, he’s gone.
At my friend’s birthday party a gay man grabs my breasts and tells everyone that he’s allowed to do it because he’s not into girls. I laugh because everyone else laughs because what else are you supposed to do?
Men press up against me on the subway, on the bus, once even in a crowd at a protest. Their hands dangle casually, sometimes brushing up against my crotch or my ass. One time it’s so bad that I complain to the bus driver and he makes the man get off the bus but then he tells me that if I don’t like the attention maybe I shouldn’t wear such short skirts.
7.
I get a job as a patient-sitter, someone who sits with hospital patients who are in danger of pulling out their IVs or hurting themselves or even running away. The shifts are twelve hours and there is no real training, but the pay is good.
Lots of male patients masturbate in front of me. Some of them are obvious, which is actually kind of better because then I can call a nurse. Some of them are less obvious, and then the nurses don’t really care. When that happens, I just bury my head in a book and pretend I don’t know what they’re doing.
One time an elderly man asks me to fix his pillow and when I bend over him to do that he grabs my hand and puts it on his dick.
When I call my supervisor to complain she says that I shouldn’t be upset because he didn’t know what he was doing.
8.
A man walks into an Amish school, tells all the little girls to line up against the chalkboard, and starts shooting.
A man walks into a sorority house and starts shooting.
A man walks into a theatre because the movie was written by a feminist and starts shooting.
A man walks into Planned Parenthood and starts shooting.
A man walks into.
9.
I start writing about feminism on the internet, and within a few months I start getting angry comments from men. Not death threats, exactly, but still scary. Scary because of how huge and real their rage is. Scary because they swear they don’t hate women, they just think women like me need to be put in their place.
I get to a point where the comments – and even the occasional violent threat – become routine. I joke about them. I think of them as a strange badge of honour, like I’m in some kind of club. The club for women who get threats from men.
It’s not really funny.
10.
Someone makes a death threat against my son.
I don’t tell anyone right away because I feel like it is my fault – my fault for being too loud, too outspoken, too obviously a parent.
When I do finally start telling people, most of them are sympathetic. But a few women say stuff like “this is why I don’t share anything about my children online,” or “this is why I don’t post any pictures of my child.”
Even when a man makes a choice to threaten a small child it is still, somehow, a woman’s fault.
straight boys are weak and pathetic, queer girls walk into the ladies changing room and see ten women naked, do they stare? do they say something inappropriate? do they make them uncomfortable? no because they have the common fucking sense to recognise when a situation is sexual and that people deserve the most basic level of respect to not be harassed, yet here we are banning shorts and low cut tops in school because straight boys are weak and pathetic
okay i made this post this morning and it has since had eighty two thousand notes, it’s been featured on reddit, facebook, twitter i’ve been sent multiple death threats and messages that i don’t even want to describe
and i have to apologise
i’ve seen the error of my ways
straight boys are not ’weak and pathetic’
straight boys are weak, pathetic and fucking annoying
what I love about buying clothes is how nothing ever fits! wait hang on, what I love about buying clothes is the expense and inconvenience! uh, no, what I love about buying clothes is the crappy materials and shoddy workmanship!
look I’ll come in again and start over
[insert discourse about pockets]
…there’s discourse about pockets? How? Are there people who are against pockets? Are pockets problematic?
pockets, aphobic and possibly terfy??
Noooooooooooooooooo I thought I was safe here!
You fools, what have you started?
(I’m not joking or exaggerating, it was pockets on dog sweaters that made me angry enough to become an Internet Feminist)
Okay. Okay.
So the thing is that pockets used to be big for everybody in Western Europe (and specifically England is where a lot of this is sourced) – they were large pouches worn on a belt (think the kind of purse a cutpurse would cut if a cutpurse could cut purses). Men wore these on belts outside their clothes, women wore them under their overdresses on a belt; the pockets could be accessed through slits in the overdress near the hips. These types of pockets were huge, large enough to carry snacks and money and oranges and workbags.
There were a couple of problems with this (from an upper-class, high society perspective). One: Nice Young Ladies Shouldn’t Grab At Their Crotches In Public What Will People Think? Two: My Daughter Or Wife May Be Planning On Running Away And Her Pockets Are Full Of Secrets (this is a plot point in the 1740 novel Pamela, in which the titular character has a change of clothes hidden in her pocket under her pillow to escape from her abusive master).
The both problems became less of a problem in the early Regency era, when the dresses shifted from being big poofy things with a wide hip to a slim, Roman-era-inspired gauzy dress like this:
You see that little bag that looks like a medallion? That’s what started a lot of the shit that was to follow. That’s a recticule and it was basically an purse that was so fashionable that it made the whole concept of purses fashionable.
Anyway, back to a chat about privacy real quick: did you know that the concept of a post office used to be controversial because women could receive correspondence that their parents or spouse didn’t know about? There was not a hell of a lot of privacy for women in this era – a very rich woman might have a desk that she could lock, but women basically didn’t own very much or have rights to own very much so if a woman was married or lived with her parents her shit was their shit and they could do with it what they liked. Enter pockets – large bags worn constantly on the person and put under a pillow at night. Got a secret love-letter? Put it in your pocket. Saving a few coins to run away? Pocket. There’s a thesis that I can’t for the life of me find online but that I read in college called “Tye’d about my middle next to my smock: The cultural context of women’s pockets” by Yolanda Van der Krol that discusses the importance of having this private space where you could keep a bit of yourself hidden.
Which brings us again to recticules. Not only were the small, the were worn outside of the clothes and therefore were less private (it would have been much stranger to put a recticule under your pillow than a pocket – if only because being under clothes prevented pockets from getting as dirty). Recticules were “hold a couple of coins” small. They were “maybe a needle case and scissors, but not yarn that’s for sure” small.
They also came into fashion right as men’s clothing was finally settling into the three-piece suit as the standard that would last for the next three hundred-ish years. As breeches and ruffled shirts were going out recticules were coming in – as were slacks and coats and vests each with their own set of pockets for a unique purpose. In the Victorian era a full suit might have as many as seventeen pockets dedicated to things like watches and snuff-boxes and wallets and pen-knifes. Between the Regency Era and the first World War women’s clothing lost its large pockets and went through a variety of purses and small pockets sewn into dresses to fit with the changing styles (surprise surprise, the Victorians were the first to introduce “fake” pockets on women’s clothing, small flaps of fabric meant to be mostly decorative). Meanwhile men’s clothing settled into the pants (though pockets in pants became more popular post-regency), shirt, vest, tie (cravat during regency, ties as we know them later), coat, and hat style that would remain standard business wear until basically now (we have largely ditched the vest in casual environments and the hat altogether). And that outfit has a fuckload of pockets. Even in the most sedate coat-and-slacks look today you’ve got a breast pocket, an inside coat pocket, two pockets on the front of the coat and four pockets on the pants (if you add a vest and a dress shirt with pockets you’ve got even more). That is an embarrassment of pockets!
Because what happened after WWI that people basically stopped making their own clothes and started buying ready-made clothes. And at that point it had become conventional for women to carry purses. And to have small pockets. And to wear tighter clothes.
AND WE NEVER CAME THE FUCK BACK FROM THAT.
Designers and manufacturers excuse the lack of pockets on women’s clothing today by saying “well, women carry purses, don’t they? they don’t need pockets.” There’s a rather infamous quote by Christian Dior just post WWII saying “men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration.” That attitude still holds. Having too many pockets “ruins the line” of a piece of clothing – a dress with pockets is a beautiful, difficult-to-find thing (it’s getting better in the last five years). You can get “mom jeans” with pockets but it’s harder to find skinny jeans with pockets (though the men’s skinny jeans have pockets).
When you DO have pockets they’re smaller. When I first got angry about this I compared my husband’s pockets to mine by trying to put my large women’s wallet in them and found that it wouldn’t fit completely inside of a single pocket that I owned and it was overwhelmed and lost in all but the smallest of his pockets. Oh, look, I found the pictures:
This is extremely potato quality but top to bottom (women’s clothing on the left, men’s on the right) we’ve got the back pocket on a pair of slacks, the outside pocket on a fleece sweater, the back pocket on a pair of jeans, the front pocket on a pair of jeans, and the largest pocket of my jacket compared to the smallest pocket of his jacket. The photos where the wallet is on top of his clothing is where you couldn’t even see the wallet in the picture because it was buried so deeply in the pocket. I didn’t include the front pocket on the slacks because my slacks didn’t have a front pocket.
ANYWAY.
Ahem.
So what started all of this was a pair of dog jackets and a pair of jeans. I’d purchased a pair of jeans and was upset to have discovered that the pockets on the front were fake (infuriating). I happened upon some dog jackets in a store – there were “girl” and “boy” jackets. The girl dog jacket had a fake pocket. The boy dog jacket had a real pocket.
Anyway I bought the “boy” dog jacket for my female dog, bought a men’s wallet (which is much smaller but doesn’t have an awesome unicorn skeleton on it) and wrote up my very first angry blog about the patriarchy.
I’ve been something of a grind on the subject of pockets ever since.
(And to anyone who is going to drop in with “just wear men’s clothing” thank you for the helpful suggestion, I find men’s sweaters and jackets quite comfortable but I have yet to find a pair of men’s pants that fits my hips, waist, and thighs simultaneously and doesn’t have an uncomfortably low crotch that chafes my thighs. Also I’ve tried that shit and as it turns out there are plenty of employers who are happy to write you up for not meeting dress code because your clothing is “sloppy or ill-fitting for an office environment.” The boss is perfectly happy when I come into the office with half my head shaved and a skater minidress over skull-patterned tights with platform boots but can’t hang when I put on a suit.)
Thank you for sitting through another session of Yelling with Alli.
GIVE WOMEN’S CLOTHING POCKETS YOU FUCKING COWARDS.
@ms-demeanor I did not know this history and it makes me EVEN ANGRIER THAN I ALREADY WAS on the subject of pockets in women’s clothing.
To summarize, a vagina can now be constructed from peritoneal tissue, meaning that it will self-lubricate, doesn’t require prior electrolysis, will be stretchier than one made from skin tissue, and doesn’t have any external grafting sites to worry about.
It is our duty as feminists to protect and respect women in Hijabs
Now. More. Than. Ever.
Question: if I see someone pull off a Hijab, what should I do? I know there are reasons they are worn so I want to if i should stand in between them and who did this, should i protect them from view somehow, or something else? This has been happening a lot so I feel it’s something everyone needs to know.
Good question! I cannot correctly and effectively answer, as I am a white, non-Muslim person; however, I will reblog in case any of my followers can answer.
I asked my Hijabi friend, so here’s one Hijabi’s answer:
“my opinion is, definitely try cover them or give them something to cover themselves with. And perhaps shoo off the person, without putting oneself in danger! God forbid, if that happened to me, I would like someone to come and comfort me and give me something to cover my hair with and then help me report it to the cops
“
(Followers, if any of you are hijabi and would like to expand on this answer or offer alternatives, please do.)
If u see it happen to 1 of us, pls cover our head + hair with a coat or shawl or any piece of cloth, while hugging us in comfort. Please don’t get hurt by lashing out @ the perpetrators in any way, coz if they dare to do that, they’re probably too far gone in their own hatred to listen to any reason. Much love + Thank You to anyone who supports us.
yes !! everything said here is important af. if you see someone pull off a girl’s hijab immediately cover her hair and provide comfort. don’t talk to the perpetrator but try to get the woman out of there if you can. maybe if you have a scarf on you at the time give it to her so she can wear it until she’s alone and can replace her hijab. please please protect muslim girls because we already had it hard before donald trump became president and now its gonna be worse with people going around thinking their violence and cruelty is justified
for my other white ppl who might have a hard time, it’s my understanding that a hijab is like a major item of clothing, not an accessory like a hat or a scarf. so think abt it more like if someone just ripped someone’s shirt or skirt off. u don’t want to be left there exposed or have to walk home without it.
everyone, even outside America needs to protect our Muslim sisters in these times.
as a man, what would be the best thing to do? should i turn my head and avoid looking at their hair? can i still offer a jacket or something similar?
^I’m hoping someone has an answer islamaphpbia is on the rise in my town and I want to be a good male non Muslim ally
For men, yes please, we would prefer it if you avoided looking at our hair, and if we don’t have something to substitute as a hijab at that moment, anything you could lend us, a jacket, etc, would be very appreciated.
Also, since most girls avoid physical contact with men they’re not related to, please do not hug them, but rather shoo the offender away if you can, or at least escort the girl to a safe place. You can still offer words of encouragement and support. Furthermore, understand that the victim may not be very welcoming towards you because she’ll obviously be shaken, and won’t know where you are coming from. If that’s the case, please still give her something to cover herself (hijab is very important, think of it as someone ripping your shirt off) and stand some distance away until you are sure she’s in safe hands.
Thank you so much for your support, we really appreciate it, god bless all of you.
My wife, Zoe, is transgender. She came out to us — the kids and me — last summer and then slowly spread her beautiful feminine wings with extended family, friends, and neighbors.
A little coming out here, a little coming out there — you know how it is.
It’s been a slow, often challenging process of telling people something so personal and scary, but pretty much everyone has been amazing.
However, she dreaded coming out at the office.
She works at a large technology company, managing a team of software developers in a predominantly male office environment. She’s known many of her co-workers and employees for 15 or so years. They have called her “he” and “him” and “Mr.” for a very long time. How would they handle the change?
While we have laws in place in Ontario, Canada, to protect the rights of transgender employees, it does not shield them from awkwardness, quiet judgment, or loss of workplace friendships. Your workplace may not become outright hostile, but it can sometimes become a difficult place to go to every day because people only tolerate you rather than fully accept you.
But this transition needed to happen, and so Zoe carefully crafted a coming out email and sent it to everyone she works with.
The support was immediately apparent; she received about 75 incredibly kind responses from coworkers, both local and international.
She then took one week off, followed by a week where she worked solely from home. It was only last Monday when she finally went back to the office.
Despite knowing how nice her colleagues are and having read so many positive responses to her email, she was understandably still nervous.
Hell, I was nervous. I made her promise to text me 80 billion times with updates and was more than prepared to go down there with my advocacy pants on if I needed to (I might be a tad overprotective).
And that’s when her office pals decided to show the rest of us how to do it right.
She got in and found that a couple of them had decorated her cubicle to surprise her:
And made sure her new name was prominently displayed in a few locations:
They got her a beautiful lily with a “Welcome, Zoe!” card:
And this tearjerker quote was waiting for her on her desk:
To top it all off, a 10 a.m. “meeting” she was scheduled to attend was actually a coming out party to welcome her back to work as her true self — complete with coffee and cupcakes and handshakes and hugs.
NO, I’M NOT CRYING. YOU’RE CRYING.
I did go to my wife’s office that day. But instead of having my advocacy pants on, I had my hugging arms ready and some mascara in my purse in case I cried it off while thanking everyone.
I wish we lived in a world where it was no big deal to come out.
Sadly, that is not the case for many LGBTQ people. We live in a world of bathroom bills and “religious freedom” laws that directly target the members of our community. We live in a world where my family gets threats for daring to speak out for trans rights. We live in a world where we can’t travel to certain locations for fear of discrimination — or worse.
So when I see good stuff happening — especially when it takes place right on our doorstep — I’m going to share it far and wide. Let’s normalize this stuff. Let’s make celebrating diversity our everyday thing rather than hating or fearing it.
Chill out, haters. Take a load off with us.
It’s a lot of energy to judge people, you know. It’s way more fun to celebrate and support them for who they are.
Besides, we have cupcakes.
Thank you. I needed this story today.
What a lovely story.
First happy tears of the day. Read it, let it soothe a little of the ugliness of today’s news.
This may just be my experience as an autistic person, but the kids I’ve nannied whose parent’s complain of ‘bad awful in cooperative selfish autistic behavior’ are… Not like that? At all?
Like, for example, I cared for a kid for a while who was nonverbal and didn’t like being touched. Around six years old? Their parent said that they were fussy and had a strict schedule, and that they had problems getting them to eat. Their last few nannies had quit out of frustration.
So, I showed up. And for the first little while, it was awkward. The kid didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, you know how it is. And for the first… Day and a half, maybe? I fucked up a few times.
I changed their diaper and they screamed at me. I put the TV off and they threw things. Not fun, but regular upset kid stuff.
Next time, I figured, hell, I wouldn’t like being manhandled and ordered around either. Who likes being physically lifted out of whatever it is they’re doing and having their pants yanked off? Fucking few, that’s who.
Next time, I go, ‘hey, kiddo. You need a new diaper?’ and check. ‘I’m gonna go grab a new one and get you clean, okay?’ ‘Wanna find a spot to lay down?’ ‘Alright, almost done. Awesome job, thanks buddy’.
I learned stuff about them. They liked a heads up before I did anything disruptive. They didn’t mind that I rattled of about nothing all day. They didn’t like grass or plastic touching their back. They were okay with carpets and towels. They liked pictionary, and the color yellow, and fish crackers, and painting. They didn’t look me in the face (which was never an issue- I hate that too, it fucking sucks) but I never had reason to believe that they were ignoring me.
Once I learned what I was doing wrong, everything was fine. Did they magically “”“become normal”“” and start talking and laughing and hugging? No, but we had fun and had a good time and found a compromise between what I was comfortable with and what they were comfortable with. (For the record, I didn’t magically sailor-moon transform into a socially adept individual, either. In case anyone was wondering.)
I don’t like eye contact. It’s distracting and painful and stresses me out.
They didn’t like eye contact either.
Is eye contact necessary to communication? No. So we just didn’t do it.
Was there ever a situation where I HAD to force them to drop everything and lay down on the lawn? No. So the thirty second warning came into play, and nobody died.
“But they never talked!”
No, they didn’t. And they didn’t know ASL, and they didn’t like being touched.
So you know what happened?
My third day in, they tugged on my shirt. ‘Hey monkey, what’s up?’ I asked. And they tugged me towards the kitchen. ‘oh, cool. You hungry?’. They raised their hands in an ‘up’ gesture. ‘you want up? Cool.’ and I lifted them up. They pointed to the fridge. I opened it. They grabbed a juice box out of the top shelf, and pushed the door closed again. ‘oh sweet, grape is the best. You are an individual of refined taste.’ I put them down and they went back to their room to play Legos.
“But they didn’t say please or thank you!” “But you should be teaching them communication skills!” “But!” Lalalalala.
1. The entire interaction was entirely considerate and polite. I was never made uncomfortable. I was made aware of the problem so that I could help them solve it. There was no mess, no tears, no bruises, no shouting.
2. Did my brain collapse into a thousand million fragments of shattered diamond dust out of sheer incomprehension? No? Then their communication skills were fine. Goal realized, solution found, objective complete. They found the most simple and painless way to communicate the situation and then did it.
Kids are not stupid. AUTISTIC kids are not stupid.
I’m willing to bet real cash money that the real reason the last few nannies had quit had a million times more to do with their own ability to cope, not the kid’s.
To this day, that was the most relaxed and enjoyable job I’ve ever had.
And I know I don’t speak for everyone. All kids are different. All adults are different. But in my time and experience, pretty much 95% of all my difficulties with children come from ME not being understanding enough. Every single “problem child” I’ve worked with turned out to be a pretty cool person once I started figuring out how to put my ego aside and let them set the pace.
Again, not speaking universally, here. I’m just saying. Sometimes social rules are bullshit, you know? People are people
Have you ever read an article about the study that found that teaching the parents to cope with autistic kids yields better results than other therapies? Because this is exactly what they were talking about.
I’ve been on a Discworld re-read for about a year now, and it just struck me how Pterry gets progressively angrier and less subtle about it throughout the series.
Like, we start out nice and easy with Rincewind who’s on some wacky adventures and ha ha ha oh golly that Twoflower sure is silly and the Luggage is epic, where can I get one. Meanwhile Rincewind just wants to live out his boring days as a boring Librarian but is dragged along against his will by an annoying little tourist guy and honestly? Fuck this.
We get the first view of Sam Vimes, and he’s just a drunken beaten down sod who wants to spend his last days as a copper in some dive but oh fuck now he has to fight a dragon and honestly? Fuck this.
The first time we see Granny Weatherwax, she’s just a cranky old woman who has never set foot outside her village but oh fuck now she has to guide this weird girl who should be a witch but is apparently a wizard all the way down to Ankh Morpork and honestly? Fuck this.
Like, these books deal with grumpy, cranky people. But mostly, the early books are a lot of fun. Sure, they have messages about good and evil and the weirdness of the world, and they’re good messages too, but mostly they are just wacky romps through a world that’s just different enough that we can have a good laugh about it without taking things too much to heart.
But then you get to Small Gods, in which organized religion is eviscerated so thorouhgly that if it was human, even the Quisition would say it’s gone a bit too far while at the same time not condemning people having faith which is kind of an important distinction.
You get to Men at Arms and I encourage everybody with an opinion on the Second Amendment to read that one.
You get to Jingo, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal (featuring an evil CEO who is squeezing his own company dry to get to every last penny, not caring one lick about his product or his workers or his customers or anything else and who, coincidentally, works out of Tump Tower. I’m not making this up).
And just when you think, whew, this is getting a bit much but hey, look, he wrote YA as well! And it’s about this cute little girl who wants to be a witch and has help from a lot of rowdy blue little men, this will be fun! A bit of a break from all the anger!
Wrong.
The Tiffany Aching books are the angriest of all. But you know what the great thing is?
The great thing is that Pterry’s anger is the kind of fury that makes you want to get up and do something about it. It upsets you, sure. But it also says It’s up to you to change all of this. And you can change all of this, and even if you can’t. Do it anyway. Because magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
It’s the kind of anger that gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. And that concludes my essay about why the Discworld series is so gloriously cathartic to read when it seems like all the world is going to shit.
So go. Read them, get angry and then get up and fight. Fight for truth. Justice. Freedom. Reasonably priced love and, most importantly, a hard-boiled egg.
Steel Phoenix Studios 