what are you gonna do about it?

I offer only vampire angst today I'm afraid 😗

Shadowheart 🖤

Songs of textile mills and workers.

Cover image is a 1911 Lewis Hine photograph of Magnolia Cotton Mills spinning room.

Down on the Merrimack River- Si Kahn

The Factory Girl’s Come-All-Ye- Diane Taraz

Boston Town- Della Mae

Doffing Mistress- Jackie Oates

Granite Mills- Cordelia’s Dad

Four Loom Weavers- Maddy Prior & June Tabor

The Mill Was Made of Marble- Magpie

Babies in the Mill- The South Carolina Broadcasters

Spinning Room Blues- Mike Seeger

Give Me That Textile Workers Union- Joe Glazer

Cotton Mill Colic- Pete Seeger

The Mill Mother’s Song- Yvonne Moore & Mat Callahan

Let Them Wear Their Watches Fine- Peggy Seeger

Cotton Mill Girls- New Harmony Sisterhood Band

Weave Room Blues- Sheri Bauer-Mayorga

Hard Times in the Mill- House of Mercy Band

Bread and Roses- Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco

Aragon Mill- Amythyst Kiah

18 tracks; 51 mins. [Spotify]

the following events ensued:

1. predictable lively discussion on the preparation of Wienerschnitzel, in which natives and wurstaboos are pro-puff and everybody else is like *confused dog head tilt* why wouldn’t you want the crust to stay ~attached to the thing you put it on? as with other fried foods?

2. thirty “Bad Schnitzel is my band name” jokes

3. thirty “Bad Schnitzel is my stripper name” jokes

4. one “ah yes, Bad Schnitzel! a lovely spa town” joke

5. this absolute masterpiece:

no more gendered dress codes. no more gender markers on passports, driver's licenses, ids. i'm not talking about "adding x" or "adding a third category" i'm talking about no more categories, period. why does the government need to know what my genital situation is? why does the government feel the need to assign me a sex on the basis of genitals? why does the cop who pulled me over need to see an m, or an f, or an x?

no more "gender is a social construct, sex is the thing that's binary." sex is not binary. abolish the idea that it is. normalize conversations about intersex traits. being intersex is natural. the sex binary is a thing imposed by the state.

no more gendered sports. if you really care about equity, sort people into categories based on skill level and athleticism, not gender or sex. the concept that there are only two sexes and that one is inherently weaker than the other is pseudoscience. the male/female hunter/gatherer dichotomy is not based in fact, and is a product of modern sexist cultural biases. one gender is not inherently subservient to the other. people are not inherently different on the basis of sex or gender. it is just more complicated than that.

the concept of multiple genders and sexes beyond the man/woman male/female dichotomy has existed as long as humans have existed. the sex binary only serves to benefit the patriarchy. the gender binary only serves to benefit the patriarchy. continuing to impose it just controls (and harms) the people it forcibly categorizes.