Weekly Link Roundup: 4/14/16

Our collection of thought-provoking, discussion-sparking reads.

• How ‘Empowerment’ Became Something for Women to Buy: “[Sheryl] Sandberg and [Kim] Kardashian are perceived by most to be opposites, two aesthetically distinct brands fighting for our allegiance, when each has pioneered a similar, punish­ingly individualistic, market-driven understanding of women’s worth, responsibility and strength. In the world of women’s empowerment, they say the same thing differently: that our radical capability is mainly our ability to put money in the bank.”

• Who Disrupts the Disruptors? We Need to Change the Way We Talk About Innovation: “The culture of disruption’s American Dream 2.0—where you can both be the man and claim to be sticking it to him—glosses over the fact that the type of innovation venerated by disruption culture often works to keep white men in positions of power and strengthens our relationship to instant-access consumerism. More importantly, it lacks critical engagement with the processes of disruption and the values being advanced by those we call disruptors.”
• What ‘white folks who teach in the hood’ get wrong about education: “There’s a teacher right now in urban America who’s going to teach for exactly two years and he’s going to leave believing that these young people can’t be saved,” says Dr. Chris Emdin, associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “So he’s going to find another career as a lawyer, get a job in the Department of Education or start a charter school network, all based on a notion about these urban youth that is flawed. And we’re going to end up in the same cycle of dysfunction that we have right now. Something’s got to give.”
• Teaching Men to be Emotionally Honest: “As men continue to fall behind women in college, while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes.”
• More Than One Medical Student at UVA Believes Black People Don’t Feel Pain: “The researchers found that half of the sample endorsed at least one of the false [medical] beliefs [about black patients], and those who endorsed these beliefs were more likely to report lower pain ratings for the black vs. white patient, and were less accurate in their treatment recommendations for the black vs. white patient.”

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Boys in Cafés

 

Edouard Manet, Chez le Pére Lathuille

More or less true vignettes from the lives of E.L. and S.A.

Waiting for your drinks in a crowded café, the man next to you pulls a dog-eared copy of High Fidelity from his pocket, angling the cover toward you. You wonder if his bad haircut is a self-conscious attempt to emulate John Cusack, or is simply a happy coincidence.

 

 

He – stocking cap, linen pants, bemused smile – approaches the table where you are preparing for class with a volume of Kant only to say that he, too, once read continental philosophy before he discovered the true “embodied philosophy” of yoga. From now on, you read all books in public with the spine flat on the table.

 

 

On your first date he asks you what kind of soul you think you have. He’s a romantic soul, he says. A lover, like Jim Morrison.

 

 

He uses a $1 bill as a bookmark in his copy of Infinite Jest. This he keeps casually on his nightstand, though you’ve never seen the bookmark move.

 

 

Your seatmate on a flight to L.A. watches The Seventh Seal on his laptop. He makes a production of turning the subtitles off.

 

 

Before you have sex he tells you what all his tattoos mean.

 

 

A barista once told you that he decided to get a masters degree in Medieval literature because it “shares a lot of resonances” with Men’s Rights literature. You don’t tell him what motivated your graduate degree.

 

 

He finds your taste in music really impressive.

 

 

His okcupid profile begins with two quotes, one by Adrianne Riche and one by Ernest Hemingway.

 

 

Your neighbor invites you to a party that he calls a “salon” where you play surrealist party games. He tells you how much it would mean to him if you read Death in Venice. The copy he gives you is the one he borrowed from you months ago.

 

 

What a shame it is, he says wistfully, that he wasn’t raised more like Thomas Jefferson, who could read and write Latin by age 10. What he couldn’t have done with an eighteenth century education.

 

 

He says he wants to write a novel about the Human Condition.

 

 

You discover years later that all those profound aphorisms he used to write in your notebook were actually just unattributed Weezer lyrics.