We are all painfully lost.

"Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink" -Kerouac

There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization, raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know algebra or can analyze literature. William Upski Wimsatt  (via infinitebynature)

(Source: radicalginger, via mushroomvision)

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via rassoodock)

(Source: generic-eric, via rassoodock)

› The Gender Coverup

countingpetals:

hollyblack:

If you are a female author, you are much more likely to get a package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. We’re the high fructose corn syrup of literature, even when our products are the same.

A great article and it’s really cool to see how some of the coverflips turned out.

To see more cover flips, go here.

As a history major and English minor in college, this is an issue I’ve encountered a lot in my schooling.

In college, if I wanted to learn about women, I had to take a special “women in literature” class and a special “women’s history” class. Because apparently literature written by women and acts performed by women aren’t “real” literature or history.

As a medievalist, we spent most of our time talking about the men, the Alfred the Greats and Richard the Lionhearts and Frederick Barbarossas of the world, despite the fact that there is source material out there about the ladies - which I would know, because come term paper time, I always wrote about them. Because Isabella of France helped lead the first successful invasion of England since the Normans. Because Eleanor of Aquitaine organized rebellions against Henry II. Because Boudica rallied her people when the Romans tried to take sovereignty away from them. But we don’t hear about that. We hear about what a “she-wolf” Isabella was. We hear about how “manipulative” Eleanor was. We hear about Boudica being stripped and flogged publicly. When we hear about these women, we hear about how “bloodthirsty” they were, like nothing they did was actually significant.

And it was the same idea in my literature classes. I took two other literature classes in addition to the women’s lit class, and I’d say the percentage of male to female authors we read was about 75/25. Even in my YA lit class - a field that is dominated by women right now - only two of the six or seven books we read were written by women, and I’m hesitant to count one of those two books because it was co-authored with a man.

In that YA lit class, we spent a day discussing covers. The cover in question was that version of John Green’s Looking for Alaska with the girl on the cover. A lot of the guys in my class said they probably wouldn’t have read the book on their own because that cover looks like “some romance novel.” Meanwhile, when we saw the original cover, they were interested because it “didn’t look so girly.”

I guess my point to this rant is, it frustrates, irritates, and angers me in turn that women are still swept under the rug in so many fields (even - or especially - the ones we dominate); that anything perceived as “girly” is associated with “bad” or “lower quality”; or any time a woman does something that doesn’t fit into some preconceived notion of what a woman should be, she’s vilified.

It’s 2013, people of society. Get over yourselves.