Whom’st?

A explicitly abusive version of [King Lear] robs us of our ability to feel for Lear. But an explicitly sympathetic Lear robs us of the ability to feel for his daughters. So I think the best version of Lear is exactly the one that Shakespeare wrote: ambiguous. It's the only version in which each character is frustratingly, but fascinatingly, complex. Cordelia loves her tyrannical and mercurial father, but she can't bring herself to say it. It's a paradox- and a question- so rich and sad that Shakespeare required a whole play to explore it.

#I sit behind a desk all day looking at spreadsheets, making great money and ruining my eyes

Is anyone else starting to feel kind of wary about the increasingly common narrative that "women's bodies are so different to men's that modern scientific recommendations do not apply to them"?

And that's how grifters de-politicise what is a highly political problem (and not an isolated one: medical misogyny relates to medical racism relates to medical ableism relates to medical transphobia). By not acknowledging medicine's status quo as political and capable of being changed through sustained, collective action, they make being (or more truly, looking) healthy seem like just another aestheticised consumer choice. That's why so much wellness bullshit looks aspirational in advertising terms, with visible ageing and disability as sticks, and Eurocentric beauty standards and the easeful performance of apparent health as carrots. At the core of "wellness" as an industry is the idea that we can buy our way out of the health inequalities imposed on us by inequitable systems of medical research, education and practice. Wellness gurus don't want us sitting down and thinking about how our historic exclusion from studies has skewed the data, but we can get better data by pushing for more representative studies - as is already happening, e.g. the growth of scholarship (increasingly led or coproduced by people directly affected) on subjects like perimenopause, autistic health inequalities (and their often gendered nature), and Black maternal health inequalities.

Here is an article from NPR about it (May 22, 2026):

I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?

And if you do become a housewife, take steps to protect yourself. Make sure you’re legally married, for starters; stay-at-home girlfriends have very little legal recourse to claim their partner’s assets in a breakup. Make sure your name is on the house deed/rental agreement, and have your car in your name, even if your spouse is paying for it. Have your spouse transfer money every month into an account solely in your name, so you can buy yourself things without needing permission, but also so you can save up to leave if needed.