This week, I've learned:

• The first two Indiana Jones movies are indeed as racist and sexist as you'd expect


• Many Waldorf schools have dress codes forbidding the children to wear specific clothes, including anything synthetic or black


• I really do like some of the t-shirt styles from Old Navy


• How to felt wool (though I can't actually do it)


• The soundtrack to Juno, which worked great in the film, is really annoying outside the film context


• It doesn't matter if I hang up my clothes outside at night or during the day, the birds shit on them either way

Virtuous? Me? As if. I know some absolutely virtuous hippies, people whose consumption actually matches their morals, who are really living lightly on the Earth. Me not so much. So, a list.

Ways in Which I am NOT a Virtuous Hippy

1. I like fast food. A lot. And I don't just nostalgically look back on it, either. I eat it, frequently, generally while driving alone in my SUV.


2. I may not have ever seen Lost or Desperate Housewives, but there is a flat screened TV at my house that cost more than my first car, and we have extended cable. No lack of TV watching.


3. Gallons, tankard trucks, absolute rivers of Pepsi.


4. I love modern medicine. If there is a shot or a pill that will make something unpleasant go away, I'll take it. If I ever have a baby, I want to do it while high as a kite on the best painkillers they can give me, and I want that baby to be fully and completely vaccinated.


5. I don't exercise. Ever. And I cannot and will not ride a bike.


6. I eat meat. I don't plan to stop.


7. I believe that violence, while never pleasant, is sometimes necessary. I also find cinematic violence extremely entertaining.


8. I have really really tried, but I don't like yoga.


9. I consider my period an annoyance.


10. I am scared of Waldorf schools.


11. My dogs can't leave the yard without a leash.

OK. I feel absolved.

This week I learned:

• Season 3 of Buffy really is as good as I thought it was.


• No matter how many times I wear them, my cute high heels give me horrible blisters.


• Three lemon bars in a row is too many.


• There is a cute US-made alternative to Crocs (thanks, Krup!).


• Etsy is a great place to buy cards.


• The Duggars are having another one.


• Gilmore Girls ended well.

Below is a list of the top 106 books tagged "unread" on LibraryThing. The rules:
bold = what you've read,
italics = books you started but couldn't finish
crossed out = books you hated
* = you've read more than once
underline = books you own but haven't read yourself

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
7. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
9. The Odyssey by Homer
10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
11. Ulysses by James Joyce
12. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
13. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
14. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
15. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
16. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
17. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
18. The Iliad by Homer
19. Emma by Jane Austen
20. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
21. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
23. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
24. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
25. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
26. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
27. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
28. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
29. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
30. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
31. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
32. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
33. Dracula by Bram Stoker
34. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck*
35. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
36. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
37. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
38. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
39. Middlemarch by George Eliot
40. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
41. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
42. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
43. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner*
44. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
45. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
46. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
47. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
48. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver*
49. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
50. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
51. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
52. Dune by Frank Herbert
53. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
54. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
55. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
56. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
57. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
58. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
59. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
60. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
61. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
62. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess*
63. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
64. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
65. Persuasion by Jane Austen
66. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey*
67. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
68. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
69. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
70. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
71. Atonement by Ian McEwan
72. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
73. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
74. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
75. Dubliners by James Joyce
76. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
77. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
78. Beloved by Toni Morrison*
79. Collapse by Jared Diamond
80. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
81. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
82. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
83. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
84. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
85. Watership Down by Richard Adams
86. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
87. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
88. Beowulf by Anonymous
89. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
90. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
91. The Aeneid by Virgil
92. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
93. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
94. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
95. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
96. Possession by A.S. Byatt
97. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
98. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
99. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
100. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
101. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
102. Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire
103. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
104. The Plague by Albert Camus
105. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
106. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

In the meantime, I've been looking for plus-sized clothes on Etsy. And I've been pleasantly surprised at what I've found. Take a look:

Sutara sells handmade clothing, including lots of hippy-style skirts with drawstring waists fitting up to 48" and wide-leg pants. My favorite of her offerings are the custom hippy patched pants show here, which she collaborates with the customer on in terms of size and style. They're $38 plus $7 S&H.

From the Fig Tree offers clothes made from mostly recycled materials (other clothes). Again, most of the clothes are drawstring "size free" affairs.

Cinnascents has a whole section of plus sized aprons, which (God bless her) look just like her other aprons, only bigger. I like the sunflower blues apron shown best. It's not a bad price, either--$19 with free shipping.

Sandmaiden makes sleepwear and lingerie in a wide size range, from 02/-18/20. It's a bit pricey but SO cute.

Jane at Bon Bon is an actual plus-sized designer! She stocks some dresses in plus sizes, but most of her stuff is made to order (you send her your measurements), and it's the same price regardless of size. She's got a wide range of prices, depending on the piece. The amazing sun dress shown here is $89 plus $7 US shipping.

Miss Bombshell offers up super-cute vintage inspired duds, all of which are available from XS-XXL. Again, not cheap (most dresses are around $85).

YodaMoon says that her clothing is "sized for real people." Things run from XS-XXL. I'll admit a fondness for her flannel bloomers--I think they'd make great lounge/PJ pants. They're $35 plus $6 shipping.

Panda Sewing is another site offering custom sized clothing, particularly dresses. Right now she has a couple of sun dresses available, up to size 24, for $46-$69 (depending on dress pattern, not size).

Six Gun Sally has a plus-sized section, mostly featuring shirts. This belted tunic is a 1X. It's $34 plus $3.50 shipping.

Or, I could give it away.

There was a piece on Marketplace on Friday about why it might be best to consider giving all or part of your stimulus check to charity. You can listen to it below, but basically the upshot is that charitable organizations are suffering right now just like everyone else, and there are those (myself included) who believe that the money these checks represent may well have been better spent bolstering social services. So, if you think like that too, maybe we should both put our money where our mouth is and give some of our stimulus checks to charity?

The question then becomes, of course, which charity? The piece on NPR mentions food banks in specific, and that makes sense. I have a couple of weeks until my deposit is supposed to show up, so I'll be thinking about it.

Things I've learned this week:

• Some people are actually annoyed by receiving paper thank you notes
• If you piss Illy off, she'll bite you and draw blood
• Garden of Eden blue corn tortilla chips are sadly salt-free
• My new clothes lines hold more than one, but less than two, loads of laundry
• My stimulus check should come in a couple of weeks
• I don't mind drinking coffee black anymore.

What did you learn this week?

Katinka Pinka makes wonderful, unusual jewelry and beautiful wrap skirts. She charges sales tax to us locals, but S&H is always free. My favorite of her stuff is this green Secret Bumble wrap skirt. It's $59, which is maybe a bit high, but it is really lovely and looks well-made. My only real complaint is that according to the description, it only fits up to a size 12.

Mother Necessity also makes wrap skirts, or at least one, this cute pink one, and as they are intended for pregnant and post-pregnant women, they might actually fit me. And, good news, Mother Necessity is a brand new shop and she says her wrap skirt offerings will soon be expanding! Prices are similar to Katinka Pinka--$55 plus $5.95 S&H in this case, and quality looks similar as well. Mother Necessity also sells slings, bibs, and burp clothes.

Washi by Maoiliosa sells washi paper jewelry, and she's currently having a 10% off Mother's Day sale (through May 5)! My favorite of her current stock is this lovely blue tsunami coin pendant, which comes with its ribbon necklace and is only $11 plus $3 S&H.

JM Day's offerings are mostly felted items that come from recycled sweaters, an idea I love. I am particularly enamored by elefelt, a striped stuffed recycled wool elephant. He's just a little guy--5"X7" or so, but he's so cute and so environmentally responsible! I'd definitely consider him for a new baby gift. He costs $21 plus $2.50 US shipping.

Finally, I have to turn your attention to prints by UneFemme. She's got some awesome stuff, some of it a bit macabre in that good way, she is currently having a BOGO sale (just through tomorrow, though, so act now)! My favorite of her featured items is The Fury, a mixed media tree print (it mixes text from architectural magazines with watercolor). It's 8"X10" and she's asking $20 plus $3 shipping for it.

Stationary
Modern Printed Matter has great stuff. The dragonfly note cards are my favorite. They are $10 plus $1.50 shipping for a set of six.

pixelimpress has lovely cards as well. I'm particularly digging the purple and green "Swimmin' Along" set

Letterary Press has some funny cards, including this Gertrude Stein card, $4 with free shipping.

My absolute favorite stationary, though, is made by winifred studios. These ridiculously cute dog cards are $10 plus $2 shipping and handling for a set of four, and she also has a pug version!

Art
Mixed media artist Jamie Beitter sells her collage art at Living in Freedom. While some of it seems vaguely religiously themed and doesn't work for me, some of it is awesome. The "Be You" print is an 8"X10", and it's $15 plus $2 S&H.

I know I've posted about them before, but I still can't get over how much I love the "I Love Your Spatulas" and "I Love Your Eggbeaters" prints at studio mela. They're 8"X10", $20 each plus $5 S&H.

I am just nuts about Angela's work at Jelly Beans. It's hard to pick a favorite, but I really love her Cherry Blossom print, which is 8.5"X11" and $15 plus $4 S&H.

Jewelry
I already bought a pendant from Ling Glass. I love it so much, I want to buy another one. This other one. It's $18 plus $3.50 S&H.

A ton of people are making pendants from paper overlaid Scrabble tiles, and I love too many of them to count. My absolute favorite, though, is Littleputbooks' "Steam Punk" pendant. It's $15 plus $2 shipping and comes in its own decorative box.

I am still, as always, lusting over the offerings of the Broken Plate Pendant Company. Right now I especially love this turquoise and orange graphic pendant, made from an Anthropologie plate. It's $30 plus $2 S&H.

I love the ephemera pendants Bluevivor makes, especially this slightly snarky Joie de vivre one. It's $10 plus $2.25 S&H.

Clothes/bags
Boutique Mia makes beautiful clothes for adults and kids. My favorite thing is this funky, choose-your-own-fabric pillowcase top. It's $32.99 plus $4.60 shipping.

Baffin Bags makes some CUTE tote/diaper bags. This sage green tote and wallet set is my favorite. It's $38 plus $6 shipping.

I've pointed out the lunch sacks at Sandra Kay Creations before, but what about this great Sami Ann tote? I love the size, shape, and fabric. It's $40 plus $8.95 S&H.

Kids' stuff
Gifts for kids are probably my favorite thing to look at on Etsy. Some of my favorite stuff is at Mountain Aven Baby. It's more money than one should spend, but this pink and brown jumping jack lounge set may well be headed to the home of a couple of friends of mine who are about to adopt their first child. It's $42 plus $4.50 shipping.

More child gift possibilities come from Bella Blu Designs. I am particularly loving this weiner dog gift set. Look at the way the dog wraps around! Look at the bone on the butt! For $36 plus $4 shipping you get the onesie, pants, and coordinating burp cloth.

Another thing I am coveting for a baby present is Baffin Bags' Amy Butler patchwork quilt. It's 32"X32", and costs $45 plus $6 S&H.

That's what I've got for now. Buy handmade! :)

And now I'm pissed.

The author, Susan Nielsen, begins her piece "Reed College can't handle the drugs anymore." She goes on to tell the stories of the two students who OD'd, then writes that it's time for Reed to "adopt a stricter policy toward hard drugs -- or at least to stop hiding the problem."

Wait just a fucking minute. There are a lot of negative things you can say about Reed, and you can even argue semi-successfully, I think, against Reed's "libertarian" drug policy. But it is completely ridiculous to say that Reed "hides the problem." If there is one thing drugs at Reed are not, it's hidden. They are open, everywhere. Nielsen goes on to say that Reed students produce a "campus guides that give detailed, chummy advice about every kind of drug." Unless something major has changed, that chummy detailed guide tells you pretty point-blank that heroin can kill you. Even if the tone isn't from on-high like good "Just Say No" propaganda, and even if its similarly honest about how good the drugs can make you feel, it isn't like it skips the part where you can be dead at the end. Seems to me that is exactly the opposite of hiding the problem.

It is a tragedy that this student died. The picture Nielsen paints, of an 18 year-old kid overdosing alone in a dorm room, is definitely a startling one. But it has almost nothing to do with Reed's "culture favoring tolerance and experimentation." There was no point in my experience with the tolerant and experimental culture where doing heroin alone in my dorm room seemed like an acceptable choice, nor was there, I'd wager, in most Reed students' lives. The whole point of the tolerant and safe culture is that you do your drugs knowingly, safely, and communally. There is a greater degree of safety in being able to talk openly about it, and in not having to hide it. That doesn't at all sound like what was going on with this kid.

What bugs me the most about the article, though, is the way the author presents Reed students' attitude. While she's right in calling students "free spirits and original thinkers" and saying that they feel that drug polices are an affront, she misses that part where that's about self-governance. It's not about anarchy, or about being allowed to be stupid, or about "misguided ideals about hard drugs." It is about Reed having a decades long history of making and enforcing its own rules, of treating its students as citizens rather than guarded children, and of giving them the freedom and space to make their own decisions, not individually, like this poor kid in his dorm room, but collectively. If Reed students are affronted, it's not because they are afraid someone is going to take their drugs away. They're smart enough to know that it is very possible for them to just do them in a sneakier manner, like every college kid everywhere else is doing. What is an affront, though, is the idea that because of this one tragedy, the tradition of self-governance is, as Reed's president put it "not working."

We have definitely made some changes. We still commute by not-all-that-efficient car, which is bad, but we commute together, which is good. We recycle everything our curbside recycling will take, which is good, but we don't save the other stuff and take it to a recycling center, which is bad. We have mostly phased out paper towels in favor of cloth napkins, which is good. I still take a shower nearly every morning and a bath several nights a week, in very hot water, which is bad. We compost, which is good, but my dear partner and in-laws spread chemical fertilizer on our roses this weekend, which is bad. So while we're improving, it is definitely safe to say we're not there yet.

What else, I wondered as I sat in traffic, should we do? What one change should we implement on this Earth Day? But by the time I got home, I'd forgotten all about it. Why? Because I was greeted by a sweaty, ranting Mark and a disassembled clothes dryer. It stopped working. He took it apart and discovered that due to an ill-fitting pipe, hot air and lint have not been going outside, as they should, but back into the dryer's cavity. This, he suspects, has either led a thermostat to trip (good) or the motor to burn out (bad). It also very easily could have caused a fire, but luckily didn't. However, we're not sure at this point if it's something Mark can fix, or if it will have to be repaired by someone from GE. Neither of those things was really going to happen last night. And in the meantime, there was a load of wet laundry in the washing machine.

Mark said he was going to ask our neighbor if we could use her dryer. But it seemed to me there was a far better plan.

A clothesline.

We live in Texas. It's hot here, already. We've got solar energy to burn. We have a decently sized yard with lots of trees to string lines between. Why on Earth have we not been using a clothesline? Why has it never occurred to me? My mom almost never uses her dryer--in the summer, she hangs clothes outside, in the winter, she hangs them inside. Rural frugality works like that. It's ridiculous that I hadn't thought of it before.

So we strung up a rope, hung the bedding that was in the washer to dry, and put dealing with the dryer off. Mark seems skeptical about the whole idea, but he'll come around. He hated the idea of compost to begin with, too. I'm going to suggest we use the dryer on an emergency basis only all summer. And I'm going to go out today at buy some clothespins.

Happy Earth Day, y'all.

TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A picture my mom sent me from home, of the road they live o.

Q. How many televisions you have in your house?
One

BIOLOGY
Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
Wisdom teeth

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
Cat litter box

Q. Have you ever been knocked out?
Twice, once to get wisdom teeth removed, once falling off a horse

BULLSHITOLOGY
Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
Absolutely not

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
At this point, I wouldn't change it. I used to want it to be Christine, though.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
Dark pink

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
Sure.

DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
Uh, yeah. Or, you know, for free.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
Hell no.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000
Probably.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
Almost certainly.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Probably not.

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
No.

DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
Don't have a pocket.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
No, stupid.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
Neither--concrete.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
Stand.

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
Four?

LASTOLOGY
Q: Last person who texted you?
I can't even remember.

Q: Last person who called you?
My mom, maybe?

Q: Person you hugged?
Mark's parents.

FAVORITOLOGY
Q: Number?
8

Q: Season?
Fall.

Q: Color?
Red.

CURRENTOLOGY
Q: Missing someone?
Yeah, Melinda and Sandy especially.

Q: Mood?
Little bit sleepy, little bit overwhelmed.

Q: Listening to?
Whatever Pandora throws at me.

Q: Watching?
My monitor.

Q: Worrying about?
Getting everything done on time. And my skin.

Q: Wearing?
Denim skirt and a black tee shirt.

RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
Work.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
Finish a big work project, go to Boston.

Q: Do you smile often?
Yes, and widely.

Q: Are you a friendly person?
Not in particular.

I can relate to a lot of what Emilin writes. Though I don't share her job-fulfillment or her mommyhood, I do get what she's saying about how your politics and how you wear them can change as you age. I'm no less "liberal" than I was at 22. My core personal and political values have remained very steady, and if anything, moving in a more privledged social/economic class has made me more aware of how completely fucked up our class system is. Ben Franklin would likely not be impressed by my brain, because I don't see much chance of my getting conservative before I hit 30.

That being said, I certainly wear it differently now. Em describes her 22 year-old self as going to protests in steel-toed boots. I wasn't a whole lot different. My hair wasn't naturally colored and was never so long. I wouldn't have been caught dead in the clothes I wear now. I hadn't yet accepted that straight was going to be the identity I got, regardless of how well I did or did not believe it fit me. The thing that Emilin wrote that really resonated with me, though, is "I'm no longer trying to impress people with my anger." That's it exactly. I'm still pissed. Extraordinarily pissed, sometimes. But I no longer define myself by it, or feel the need to share it in quite the same overt manner. And I no longer consider being angry an accomplishment. It may well be my birthright, but it isn't my destiny.

I never would have expected to be where I am now. The office job, the mortgage, the gaggle of pets, the (gasp) SUV. The friends all around me getting married and having babies. It wasn't at all what I envisioned for myself. I expected to be writing professionally, to be in a major city, to finally have achieved hip. And while I'd still love to be writing professionally, those other things are not only not my reality, they are no longer even appealing. I've been to enough major cities now that I know I am not keen on living in one, and hip ceased to be a goal sometime around when I gave up trying to keep the dog hair off me.

I'm not as fulfilled as Em seems to be in her post, mostly due to my job situation (which isn't bad but isn't as great as hers), but also because Em has already made decisions (marriage, baby, where in the country to live permanently) that I haven't made yet. Marriage is pretty well out, but kids are still a maybe, and my feet definitely aren't growing any roots yet. While I am not in a hurry to make those decisions (time still doesn't seem to be moving overly fast to me), I don't think I'll ever have the sense of contentment in Emilin's post until I do. And that's fine. I've been in transition, more or less, for 28 years now, I can transition for a few more.

On one hand, I am amused at how normal I've become with my job and my clothes and my house and my life. And yeah, I'm a little bit disappointed, too. I definitely see people living differently and feel jealous. But I also know something now I didn't use to--that you can have these trappings, live in this class, and still have a spirit and a soul and creativity inside you. I may look like an automaton, but I'm still the same person I have always been in my head. If anything, I am confident enough in that person now that I don't feel like the need to shove her down everybody's throat every five minutes. And I think that might be progress?

My first reaction is to ask, as I always ask, who are these crazy people who thought we were in post-feminist space? Who really thought that we'd done all we needed to do and we now live in an equitable world? I'm always puzzled by that. The article implies that you have to be out of your 20s to really "get" how sexist the world is, that nothing other than a decade in the workplace will teach you. I think that's bullshit. Sure, we face sexism in the workplace, but we were already facing it in the media, in our schools, in our families. I'm hard pressed to think of the moment when I first knew sexism existed--not because I never noticed it, but because it has always been there. I absolutely believe progress has been made by each "wave" of feminism, but to pretend it's over is just ridiculous, and it's hard for me to have much respect for someone who needed what has happened to Clinton to prove we still live in a sexist society.

That being said, I do think HRC's run for president and some of the reactions to it have made the depth of the sexism and the misogyny in which we are still steeped a little bit easier to grasp. Some of the bullshit leveled at her has been so outlandishly obvious in its sexism, it's hard to miss, even, I would expect, for those who had previously chosen to believe feminism was no longer needed. Things like why we find her voice "grating" or are more concerned about her "aging" than a male counterpart are subtle, but the Hilary nutcracker sure isn't.

What I am not willing to say, though, is that sexism is "worse" than racism in the U.S., or that the sexism towards Clinton has been worse than the racism towards Obama. It's a bit of a hard thought to put into words, but I have trouble separating sexism and racism from each other. They come from the same place, I think. The land-owning white men who devised this country thought of both Black human beings and female human beings as property, and to my mind, we're still living with the effects of that in both cases, probably more or less equally. I see the slights against Clinton more clearly, I think, because I am used to being a woman in this society, but that doesn't mean the slights against Obama, often brought to my attention by people of color, aren't there.

If people who were previously asleep to sexism are now coming awake, then Clinton's candidacy is worth even more to me than I thought it was. I can only hope that they'll remain alert and not stick their heads back in the sand once the election is over.