What I've read

Astrologers and psychics have known these tricks for years. The magician Ian Rowland, in his classic “The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading,” itemizes them one by one, in what could easily serve as a manual for the beginner profiler. First is the Rainbow Ruse—the “statement which credits the client with both a personality trait and its opposite.” (“I would say that on the whole you can be rather a quiet, self effacing type, but when the circumstances are right, you can be quite the life and soul of the party if the mood strikes you.”) The Jacques Statement, named for the character in “As You Like It” who gives the Seven Ages of Man speech, tailors the prediction to the age of the subject. To someone in his late thirties or early forties, for example, the psychic says, “If you are honest about it, you often get to wondering what happened to all those dreams you had when you were younger.” There is the Barnum Statement, the assertion so general that anyone would agree, and the Fuzzy Fact, the seemingly factual statement couched in a way that “leaves plenty of scope to be developed into something more specific.” (“I can see a connection with Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part?”) And that’s only the start: there is the Greener Grass technique, the Diverted Question, the Russian Doll, Sugar Lumps, not to mention Forking and the Good Chance Guess—all of which, when put together in skillful combination, can convince even the most skeptical observer that he or she is in the presence of real insight.

As far as devious plans by teen soap villain dads go, this one is pretty good — it’s all-too-realistic, evil, and actually seems plausible as a necessary real estate secret, since getting the sleepy town of Riverdale to agree to host a cash-grab carceral factory does in fact sound like a hard sell. Archie, as a proto-fascist idiot, loves the idea, to the point where he is willing to turn his back on his horrified father, who’s ostensibly the reason he became interested in Riverdale’s “safety” in the first place. Bringing a visible symbol of the power of law and order in all its forms to Riverdale seems, to this impressionable teen, to be an excellent idea, a way for him to maintain control in the face of all of the things threatening him in the dark. Motivated by fear, Archie makes a blood pact with a duplicitous hyper-capitalist who justifies his crimes by appealing to the family unit, a man Archie ascribes the not-at-all-creepy quality of “seeing what has to be done and doing it” — a perfect little parable of the American right.

But pop’s portrayals of sexuality have been complicated – and muted – by an unusually eventful half-decade. Intimacy has been corrupted by technology and anxiety. Female artists are redefining sexuality. Would-be seducers must acknowledge conversations about consent and gender politics. Provocateurs who aren’t progressive are soon rumbled. R&B is grappling with what pleasure looks like when black bodies are under siege from police brutality and cultural fetishisation. And LGBTQ listeners are demanding more than rote heterosexual hook-ups. This immediacy is nothing new – pop has always either shaped or reflected the social and sexual mores of its era – but the outcomes are.

One of the things that’s been most challenging is the confidentiality that a legal proceeding requires. When I couldn’t outright say what I was doing, I could at least post loafer pics. I also wanted to show my lawyer that, hey, I might be crushed under the weight of the patriarchy but I can also be, you know, fun. I’d seen too much skepticism around victims. Felt the ripple in the air when a woman starts telling her story. Sure, we might believe that she’s been harassed. But the later effects of being harassed, the subtler, more insidious and downstream effects — the way in which I started to wonder who was with me and who was against me; the lack of trust I could feel myself developing for almost everyone I encountered in the halls of my former department; the shame I felt at being told that my former cohort had mostly abandoned my cause; my double shame at using words like “shame” and “abandon” — are the forces my clothing is fighting against.

Everyone can see it. Everyone can feel it. Everyone, that is, who’s not looking for October.

When the stories that manage our desires break their promises over and over, the stories themselves become fuel for change and open a space for new, radical stories. These new stories must feature collective demands that provide a critical perspective on the real limits to success in our society and foster a vision of life that does fulfill the desire for self-actualization.

to barter ingredients for your cruelty-free dinner

Margot sat on the bed while Robert took off his shirt and unbuckled his pants, pulling them down to his ankles before realizing that he was still wearing his shoes and bending over to untie them. Looking at him like that, so awkwardly bent, his belly thick and soft and covered with hair, Margot recoiled. But the thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming; it would require an amount of tact and gentleness that she felt was impossible to summon. It wasn’t that she was scared he would try to force her to do something against her will but that insisting that they stop now, after everything she’d done to push this forward, would make her seem spoiled and capricious, as if she’d ordered something at a restaurant and then, once the food arrived, had changed her mind and sent it back.

On the origins of diversity Diversity has become a worn and misapplied term partly as a result of its messy origins. The term as we use it today first emerged in 1978, as part of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in University of California v. Bakke. The court struck down quotas but upheld affirmative action, allowing an applicant’s race to factor into college-admissions policies. It was a divisive case, which resulted in a total of six opinions. The judgment of the Court was written by Justice Lewis Powell, who argued that the state had an interest in maintaining a “diverse student body.” Powell’s rationale differed slightly from the rest of the majority, who predicated their support for affirmative action on an acknowledgment of America’s legacies of discrimination and inequality. From the very beginning, then, there was something vague and ahistorical about diversity, particularly in the context of higher education. Rather than a means of historical redress, it was meant to be useful.

What social workers and other people don’t often tell you is that self-care can be completely terrible.Self-care includes a lot of adult-ing, and activities you want to put off indefinitely. Self-care sometimes means making tough decisions which you fear others will judge. Self-care involves asking for help; it involves vulnerability; it involves being painfully honest with yourself and your loved ones about what you need.

He would have us believe that he made bad decisions at 19, and has learned from them. We have all made our fair share of bad decisions. There is a canyon of difference, however, between bad decisions and allegations of rape. I also wonder how much Mr. Parker has really changed when he continues to befriend the man with whom he shared what he terms one of the most painful moments in his life. Mr. Celestin shares a story credit on “The Birth of a Nation,” a detail that continues to stun me.

Perhaps Halsey will avoid incorporating too much queerness into her image in the future, and teen girls like Steele will find their sexual awakenings elsewhere. Or perhaps she’ll prove that being an androgynous, bisexual pop star is a real possibility in the mainstream. Maybe she’ll avoid that path altogether, veering back into the alt-internet world from whence she came. Or maybe, if she continues dancing up and down the spectrums she navigates every day, Halsey will force us to question why we’re still trying to place people on those spectrums at all.

The most important part of restorative justice is that it is a victim-centered practice. While the healing of both the victim and the abuser are goals, restorative justice centers the needs and the safety of the victim as a primary concern.