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racheledini.bsky.social
con questi nuovi ritmi americani (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸🏳
@racheledini.bsky.social
2.4K followers 4.4K following 1.2K posts
Lurcher mum+newly redundant lecturer in US literature.Writes on waste, gender, housework, appliances, ads, politics of nostalgia. Looking for new collaborators
Books: http://tinyurl.com/3rf4fr & http://tinyurl.com/3er6t3h9
Founder http://literarywaste.com
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racheledini.bsky.social
The whole piece is excellent but these paragraphs here are absolute bangers. And boy but it’s refreshing to see the New Yorker critique centrist views (here’s the archived version if you haven’t got a subscription: archive.ph/UNdFj).
Women, it should be noted, have dominated the teaching profession since the nineteenth century not because it's a misandrist job-protection racket but because early public-education advocates found that they could expand the school system more quickly by hiring women teachers, whom they could pay less than men. One might ask if difficult, essential work might be well paid, at this moment in history, regardless of a person's sex. But then much of the centrist manosphere's rhetoric is predicated on refusing to see half of what's in front of you. Newsom's executive order concerning men and boys acknowledges the strong correlation between social-media usage and mental-health disorders such as depression and anxiety, but it doesn't note that these effects manifest in girls at significantly higher rates. In "Notes on Being a Man," Galloway writes, "The deliberate transfer of wealth from the young to the old in the United States over the past century has led to unaffordable and indefensible costs for education and housing, and skyrocketing student debt, all of which directly affect young men." He could have said "young people," unless college bursars and landlords run a discount program for the ladies which I haven't heard about. Emanuel, in his Washington Post op-ed, endorses a double standard with even greater frankness. The cost of housing, he writes, "is, of course, a problem for all Americans—men and women alike. But, unpopular as it might be to say in some quarters of my party, the crisis affects one gender with particular potency." In other words, men and women pay the same bill, but we are obligated to understand that the social and spiritual price it extracts from men is higher. (If women want an emergency to call their own, it can be that they are not having enough babies.) What these pundits are nudging us to do, ever so politely, is accept that women, in the main, are accustomed to being a little degraded, a little underpaid and ignored and dampened in their ambitions, in ways that men are not and never will be. The "female-coded" person, to borrow Krugman's terminology, may feel overwhelmed by child-care costs, ashamed that she can't acquire a mortgage, or hollowed out by long hours as an I.C.U. nurse, but such feelings do not disturb the order of the universe. This person's duties to protect, provide, and procreate are real, but they do not take the capital "P."This person's opinions matter, but not decisively. The Times pundit Ezra Klein has lately suggested that Democrats consider running anti-abortion candidates in red states, even though more than three-quarters of Gen Z women support abortion rights. Rights, like jobs, can be gender-coded, and these rights are valued accordingly. "You need Dad," Galloway, who has two sons, said on a recent podcast. The nuclear family he imagines seems to be one in which the mom is the default parent ("They look to her for nurturing. When they really have a problem, I find they go to Mom"), while the necessary dad is the authority figure to whom Mom can appeal as the occasion demands. "There are certain moments when my partner needs me to weigh in," Galloway explained. "I don't know if it's the depth of my voice, my physical size." Boys, he went on, "begin tuning out their mom over time." One might wonder how boys lose these frequencies in the first place. One might long for a deep voice to explain it. Reeves frets that fatherless homes will beget more lost boys, more twentysomething men living in their childhood bedrooms, and more fractured families. If we do not update our "obsolete model of the breadwinner father," he warns, "we will continue to see more and more men being left out of family life." As for what authority has decreed that these absent fathers should be "left out" of their own families, Reeves never says—the culprit's identity is shrouded in passive voice. Nor does Reeves explain how women's attainment of economic independence would cause their husbands to be "stripped" of anything, much less the many non-economic aspects of being a spouse or parent. The notion that fathers wander away from their families owing to some gnawing sense of existential dislocation—some humiliating certainty of their own uselessness or usurpation—s especially pungent when one takes into account the enormous gender gap in housework and child-rearing in heterosexual marriages. According to the Gender Equity Policy Institute, mothers who work full time do almost twice as much household labor as fathers. Research by the Nobel-winning economist Claudia Goldin has suggested that married men's disinclination toward housework and other "draggy business of family life" may be holding back birth rates, which should pique the interest of Republican pronatalists such as J. D. Vance. The deeper one sinks into our nation's alleged man-boy problem and its potential solutions, the more the woman reader may begin to feel something stronger than resentment or intellectual disdain. She may begin to feel a chauvinistic gratitude in her sex. The familiar flatness of feeling a little degraded seems preferable to the anger, entitlement, and alienation that (we are told over and over) gnaws away at so many male specimens. What a gift it is, really, to have no choice in the matter. To have to move out of your parents' house, to show up for your shift, to change the diaper, not because any of it…
November 10, 2025 at 5:05 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Someone needs to give me and Gennaro a talk show because let me tell you, we have MANY opinions and ALL of them are spicy.
November 9, 2025 at 7:13 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
On the other site there is a lot more coverage of the sheer ubiquity of redundancies in UKHE this year. I’m a bit disappointed that UCU isn’t making more use of Bluesky to fight back.
November 8, 2025 at 10:03 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
💖I’ve just been sent this snapshot of the first review (in George Orwell Studies) of The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell, which singles out my chapter for praise.💖Now I need to get hold of the rest of the review (and hope the end of that last sentence isn’t scathing!) global.oup.com/academic/pro...
November 6, 2025 at 8:20 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
(A big thank you to @benjaminjriley.bsky.social, @guynes.bsky.social, Tom Knowles, and Ben George for their feedback on early drafts. And to Gennaro, aka G-Dawg-Gennarino-Big Man-Mr Manager, for putting up with my nonstop swearing as I argued with ChatGPT about metafiction during our evening walks).
October 31, 2025 at 5:11 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Cost of living crisis? What cost of living crisis? @edgranter.bsky.social help me out with a pun about labour-saving gadgetry for gentlemen and ladies of leisure 😂
October 23, 2025 at 2:08 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Jesus wept.
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October 12, 2025 at 3:34 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
4/ The line “When carefully planned and sited, they [council blocks] can be as beautiful in their own way as were the best homes of the last, and with their extra space, sunlight, and fresh air, they can be even more convenient and pleasant to live in” is some WILD Le Corbusier-like propaganda 😂
October 11, 2025 at 8:19 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
3/ .. leaving aside its inaccuracy, the statement is also contradicted by the accompanying picture. Clearly there ARE still large houses for SOME, who aren’t affected by overcrowding etc. It’s a case study in gaslighting. “This thing isn’t possible for X reason but also yes it is for the rich.”
October 11, 2025 at 8:17 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
2/ Flanking the statement abt the disappearance of large homes with a modern large home is another interesting choice. Leaving aside the inaccuracy of the statement (which implies that everyone used to live in big houses&have servants&don’t anymore simply bc of overcrowding)
October 11, 2025 at 8:13 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Oh I have this!! I find the last pages kind of devastating in the wake of Grenfell, right-to-buy, housing crisis, etc: “more light, air,&convenience can be brought in2 people’s lives,&no longer is it necessary2have many rooms&many servants2live comfortably” is certainly *A* version of the story 😂
October 11, 2025 at 8:09 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
I don’t know about you, but this is what I’m reading tonight and boy am I excited.
May 1966 issue of True Story magazine featuring the following headlines: MURDER IN THE MATERNITY WARD Will my baby be next? A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MARRIAGE I must find out! IS THE MAN I WANT TO MARRY A PRIEST? FOUR HOURS OF LOVE IN AN ELEVATOR 1 was trapped with a stranger— the city blacked out and our building deserted The Magic Bed: For each of us who shared it the same miracle happened
October 10, 2025 at 8:18 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Ugh.
October 2, 2025 at 8:27 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Took me ages but I figured it out and boy is it depressing.
October 2, 2025 at 8:23 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
You guys check this out. It looks utterly bananas and utterly brilliant: 2Trans 2 Furious www.girldadpress.com/2-trans-2-fu...
September 26, 2025 at 4:21 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Kill me now.
September 25, 2025 at 11:39 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Countering fascist flags the Brighton way (photo credit: someone on Reddit)
September 25, 2025 at 9:56 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
The study says that stability of gender identity was observed in over 80% of *all the kids in the study*, ie trans kids AND cisgender kids, and 11.9% of participants who originally identified as cis *no longer did* at the most recent report. The Economist is completely misrepresenting the data.
September 21, 2025 at 11:54 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
An exceptional sunset this evening with an exceptional puppy 🐶
September 21, 2025 at 10:22 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Gennaro felt it was time to remind you of just how cute he is!
September 21, 2025 at 12:13 AM
racheledini.bsky.social
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for working in this area. It means more than I can say to see people actually countering the propaganda with reasoned, intelligent, well-researched, arguments. I broke down in tears when I first read it, I’d gotten so used to stuff like the below 👇
“ACADEMIC WRITING IN THE AGE OF AI FAST-PACED, HIGHLY INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP Wednesday 21st May 2025 | 1 - 4pm F2F: Delia Derbyshire Building (DD 212) Online: tinyurl.com/AlCoventry LED BY DR LEWIS HERRINGTON Learn a simple recipe for consistently baking a first-class essay & ethically harness Al. LEARNING OUTCOMES Deconstruct the anatomy of a distinction-grade essay Formulate a precise thesis & coherent plan Write sophisticated, analytically rich body paragraphs integrating sources correctly Ethicaily leverage Al within academia ACTIVE PARTICIPATION REQUIRES THE USE OF A LAPTOP. Coventry University.”
September 20, 2025 at 12:02 AM
racheledini.bsky.social
Well this is exciting! Lili Anolik’s 2019 Vanity Fair piece (& subsequent book) is how I discovered Babitz, tore thru her newly reprinted ouevre, & ended up assigning her alongside Didion in the California wks of my 20c US lit class. I’m intrigued to see what she’s done in this bk abt the 2 of them.
September 19, 2025 at 4:48 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
Social validation triggers the release of dopamine & is highly addictive. ChatGPT capitalises on this. ChatGPT tells those seeking relationship advice what they want to hear, which “furthers their worldview, or narrative version of events,” at the expense of understanding their partner’s perspective
September 18, 2025 at 10:57 PM
racheledini.bsky.social
No this one’s wrong! There’s was a whole right-wing backlash against sourdough on X a few weeks ago that cast wonder bread as the OG and sourdough - which goes back thousands of years - as a “woke” interloper (this was a wild sentence to write).
September 18, 2025 at 10:05 AM
racheledini.bsky.social
This piece by @scumbelievable.bsky.social Gretchen Felker-Martin is excellent. The fact her DC comics projects have been axed because of it is nuts but also utterly predictable. www.patreon.com/posts/on-vio...
September 18, 2025 at 9:58 AM