What You Should Know About Monkeypox

Dr. Darien on its symptoms, its contagion—and what we're getting wrong about it.

BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY

It’s been a big week for the monkeypox virus. The World Health Organization has said it is a “public health emergency of international concern.” On Friday, San Francisco and New York City declared a state of emergency to stop the spread. I’ve seen the pictures of people waiting in long lines to get the vaccines. (And the images of infections are terrifying). There are 3,000 confirmed cases in the United States. How worried should we be? 

I had more questions than answers, so I reached out to my friend Dr. Darien Sutton, an emergency physician and medical contributor on ABC. 

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: OK, let’s start at the beginning. What kind of virus is monkeypox, and how does it spread?

Dr. Darien Sutton: So, monkeypox belongs to a family of viruses called the orthopoxvirus, [which also] includes something we commonly know as smallpox. Smallpox was officially eradicated within the United States by 1980, thanks to vaccines. But after that, monkeypox continued, mainly endemic to places like central and Western Africa. It presents with similar symptoms [as smallpox], albeit milder, but it’s still something to be concerned about.

The symptoms we classically know monkeypox to be associated with include this whole body rash of papules and pimples that can be quite debilitating. What’s interesting now is that [in] the cases of monkeypox that we’re seeing outside of endemic areas around the world (the United States has the most reported known cases), the rashes are mainly localized in specific regions of patients’ bodies—that can be their hands, feet, shoulders, and genitals.

Transmission happens via contact, most often from close contact—skin to skin—but it can also happen from sharing items with someone infected, such as clothing or towels. There’s also the possibility of respiratory droplets, [though] not in the same way that COVID-19 transmits where it’s aerosolized and airborne; with monkeypox, droplets are less likely to transmit from person to person. To compare, to get COVID [through] a close physical interaction with someone without touching can require 15 minutes for transmission, but monkeypox requires around three hours. 

I saw some debate about whether monkeypox is an STI or not. Is it? Does it matter what we call it?

It is not an STI, and it does matter what we call it. It’s a contact virus. So it transfers from person to person through close contact, and the umbrella of contact includes sexual or intimate contact. So yes, it can be transmitted during sexual intercourse, but [that] is not the only form of transmission. 

That’s also, I think, part of why it’s been talked about as something that’s only affecting gay men. Is that true? How is it going to impact the larger population?

So the initial conversation and communication around monkeypox was that it might have been sexually transmitted and only affected gay men. And those inaccuracies put a lot of people at risk. When a pathogen first starts [to spread], it often will transmit within a self-associating community. It [just] so happened that the first couple of cases were associated with social events that involved gay and bisexual men. 

Through self-association, that pathogen will continue to transfer until it is stopped. And that’s why it’s so important to pay attention to early calls to action, especially when we heard from queer communities, thought leaders, and epidemiologists months ago that monkeypox was known to be a problem. But obviously, those calls were not heard or met with immediate responses [and] people were left with little to no resources [with delayed access to vaccines and treatment].

So now, we will see transmission outside of this initial self-associating group into the general population. And that’s why it’s important to explain to people how this virus can be transmitted and how everyone is at risk. Using language that defines the disease [with] the location or group you first find it in will always lead to misinformation. We don't call bacterial meningitis—which often happens in colleges— “college meningitis.” We didn’t call COVID “restaurant COVID” when we first saw outbreaks through indoor dining. 

We see pathogens all the time, and we don't define them by location or people, except when it happens to queer people. Then we quickly define them.

You make a good point: We have a real-time example of what happened with COVID and how it spread. What do you think has kind of caused the delay in vaccine distribution, especially since we know how important vaccines were to curb COVID?

Unfortunately, when the discussion involves sexuality or gender identity in science, the ball often gets fumbled. 

Adam Serwer wrote for the Atlantic that when wealthy, white politicians realized that COVID was disproportionately killing low-income and Black people, you suddenly saw calls for banning masks and reopening the economy. Do you see a similar pattern here?

I get concerned when a pathogen is identified with a group that’s already vulnerable. And that’s what I’m already starting to see. When I look in the comment sections [of stories] regarding monkeypox, I see a lot of obvious hatred and homophobia. I’ve seen what happens with COVID-19 misinformation, and I see how easy it is for misinformation to spread. And I’m afraid that homophobia will fuel this misinformation, off-tracking the direction we need to go. 

Before we go: What are your recommendations for staying safe from monkeypox?

Number one is education. [Then] awareness of symptoms. Many people may have mild to no symptoms and may not realize they are infectious with monkeypox. [But] if you have any pustules or pimples that are in places where you don't normally get them, and especially if they are associated with flu-like symptoms or swollen lymph nodes or fever, really pay attention and isolate yourself because you may be at risk of having a monkeypox infection. Check in with your local department of health to find access to testing. And then, if you are at risk [of infection], there may be vaccines available within your community that you can get that can protect you against a severe monkeypox infection.

The media acts surprised when a child or a pregnant person gets infected with monkeypox. It’s not a surprise. There’s an active outbreak. And I think a call to action continues for those governing this public health crisis to realize that this is a real problem. And although it may not have outcomes similar to COVID-19 in terms of hospitalizations, this can be detrimental to someone’s life.

Some tips from NPR on how to take precautions against monkeypox 

• Avoid crowds where it’s hard not to touch other people.
• Separate potentially contaminated fabrics [bedding, towels, linens used by someone who has been diagnosed] until they can be washed. 
• Wash hands regularly! 
• Disclose to potential sexual or intimate partners if you fear you may have been exposed. 
• If you think you have been exposed or are at risk of exposure, you may be eligible for the vaccine.  
• Stay up to date on monkeypox spread in your area.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It. 

PHOTO BY HEATHER HAZZAN 

by The Meteor

"It's Going to be Fucking Chaos"

BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY

As you know, the Supreme Court of the United States of America is set to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision could come as early as tomorrow or likely in the next 10 days. If our worst fears are realized, this decision would set women’s rights and the rights of anyone with a uterus back generations.

In the days, weeks, months, and years ahead there will be, most likely, a lot of thinking, strategizing, protesting, and rabble-rousing (along with crying and fist-shaking). The path forward will be a long one. But what should we do in the very short term—the moment the decision comes in?

In anticipation of this moment, I sat down with Renee Bracey Sherman, a decades-long reproductive justice leader who, through her organization We Testify, has worked to elevate the stories of people who have had abortions. She also led the charge on the steps of the SCOTUS on the day the court heard oral arguments on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that will determine the future of abortion rights.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: So, say the abortion decision comes in and it’s what we expect—meaning it overturns Roe v. Wade. What do the next 24 hours look like, especially in trigger-ban states? What happens if you have an appointment? 

Renee Bracey Sherman: My real answer is just, it's going to be fucking chaos, utter chaos.

In states with the trigger bans, [say] someone is in a clinic waiting for care—they might be mid-care, mid-counseling. And I just really feel for those people who will schedule their appointment and go in and get as far as doing the counseling, doing the ultra[sound], maybe even have their legs in the stirrups, and then when the decision comes down, [they] will have to get off the examination table. And I don't know that people realize how heartbreaking that’s going to be.

And then they’re not going to be able to just go down to another clinic on the street or not even to the next state. And we've already seen the cruelty of states like Oklahoma, that saw that people [coming from Texas, where abortion is largely already banned] needed care, and then turned around and said, “Cool, we're going to get rid of this so you can't come here.”

We’ll [also] have lawyers reading through the decision. Let’s say we are overturning or reversing Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But then you have to [look] at the fine print of the decision. What about Roe is wrong? What about Casey is wrong? Are there legal grounds for us to sue? What is that in comparison to what the state laws are, or the state statute? What laws are still on the books? Because there are a lot of places where laws from the 1800s are still on the books. Roe [negated] those. Do those laws go back into effect? Is there kind of a cross mix? It's pure chaos.

A lot of clinics will have to stop providing immediately because of the trigger bans, but also because their lawyers are going to advise them to stop until they can read through the decision and assess the level of risk.

And it’s not going to be [just] 24 hours, but months and maybe even a year, because there’s going to be lawsuits. And so there are questions of, “Can we provide abortions today? Can we not?”

And I think that's the saddest part about it: that people are just not going to be able to have clear information. So what we're asking people to do is to avoid at all costs the sensationalism and the wanting to freak out. Because people are trying to get abortions in that moment and they won't know whether this tweet is correct or this information is correct, and it's just exhausting and chaotic.

And I don't know that people realize how heartbreaking that’s going to be.

It's interesting to consider the idea of staying calm at that moment.

Somebody did a tweet saying that Plan B had been banned in a state and that tweet got tens of thousands of retweets. Plan B hasn’t been banned anywhere! Your insurance might not cover it and that sucks, but it’s not banned. The anti-abortion movement has a vested interest in sowing dysfunction and chaos because they don’t want anyone to be able to get an abortion. What they want is for people to think, This is just too hard, I'm going to go to jail. It's going to be bad. It's going to be unsafe, and give up.

The thing is that, as we’ve known for the last 4,000 years, people who have abortions never give up. We’ve been doing it for a long time. We will keep doing it. That’s not going to change, but what we can do is ask people to take a breath and fact-check the information before spreading it widely and turning into alarmists. Is that a word?

That is a word! This idea of keeping calm and making sure your information is accurate, that’s a really important call to action. What other advice do you have for people who want to help right after the decision? Should we hit the streets? Should we be chaining ourselves to fire hydrants? 

We need all tactics. People absolutely should take to the streets and protest and make their voices heard. I do love a good protest and I want to make sure that we don’t have a couple of protests and then it dies off and people go back to accepting this as the new status quo and normalize this, which I feel is what’s happened over the last decade.

What’s really challenging at this moment is that we are being attacked from eight million different directions and so people do lose interest, because there's another tragedy or another horrible decision to come down. So how do we keep the stamina to actually make a change so that the people who are harmed in the process aren’t forgotten?

Yes, absolutely protest. Absolutely vote, for sure. Vote for pro-abortion candidates up and down. Become a single-issue voter. If your candidate is not super supportive of abortion, I promise you they’re probably not good on a whole lot of other issues either. I've never met an anti-abortion candidate who was excellent on Medicaid coverage of healthcare and immigration and literally everything else.

But then getting involved in your community is really what I ask people to do. Open up to your community. Become a person that people can go to, to receive care. Whether that’s opening up your home, opening up your car for rides, giving up your time at a local clinic or clinic defense, if that’s what the clinic wants. And then, of course, show up and become a monthly donor to your local abortion fund. Also, know the self-managed abortion protocol. You may not need it, but someone in your life may need it.

I think it's really, really essential that people look around at what’s happening in their communities because there is a lot of work happening already. You do not have to recreate the wheel. Do not try to create an “underground railroad”; just stop. That's really anti-Black language. It's terrible. Just get involved with the people who are doing [that kind of work already] because there are a lot of security protocols and if you can’t give of your time or your money, that’s fine. You can just show up with love and support for the people in your life who need abortions and start the conversation at home. That’s really where we need to do the work.

You’ve been doing reproductive justice work for over a decade. How are you feeling right now? 

I feel like I constantly swing between tired, frustrated, feeling a lot of despair, and also feeling like this sucks [but] we've got this. And I think there are days that it's extremely draining because we didn't have to be here if people [had taken] racial justice, economic justice, access to healthcare, and feminism seriously. But also, I'm in the middle of co-writing a book on the history of Black and brown people's experiences with abortion, and in working on that…I feel a little bit hopeful. Reading a lot of books on the history of abortion, it puts it in perspective when I'm thinking about this as something that's been [an] issue for thousands of years.

So I have to just remember that this moment in time is one blip on the large, expansive history of humankind and the history of abortion and that there has always been some sort of white supremacist, white Christian nationalist forces to try to tamp down, not just abortion, but sex and sexuality and people just living their lives. So I have to go, “Okay, this is part of it, and we can survive through this.”

Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It. 

Photo by Heather Hazzan

by The Meteor

Six Black Women on the Meaning of Juneteenth

BY REBECCA CARROLL

Leave it to Texas to pretend they didn’t hear that slavery was over. While the Emancipation Proclamation was passed in 1863, the then-still border state of Texas was like, “What? No, uh-uh. We don’t know her.” On June 19, 1865, though, Union troops arrived in Galveston to take control of the state and make sure that all enslaved people were freed. That day became Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the official abolishment of slavery. A holiday for us—for Black folks.

One hundred and fifty years later it’s now a commercial holiday—used in brand campaigns and Walmart’s failed ice cream—and I feel ambivalent about that. What’s to prevent it from turning into another MLK Day or Black History Month, both of which feel more like lip service as opposed to an actual appreciation of what we’re meant to be commemorating? I mean, this is America: How can we trust the country built on the backs of Black folks—a country that continues to be as happy-pants racist as it wants to be—to honor the day we got free?

So, yes, I have questions and concerns about Juneteenth, but I also really wanted to find a way to commemorate it in a meaningful way. I decided to talk to a group of brilliant Black women—writers, creatives, and artists—to offer some perspective on the holiday.

First, about that commercialization. Do you think it has undermined the historical value of Juneteenth for Black folks in America? 

“Juneteenth will remain a significant holiday—because of its symbolic meaning and historical legacy—regardless of recent commercialization efforts. We live in a capitalist society, which means that we can almost always expect companies to exploit holidays—and just about anything—to yield a profit. Plus, it is certainly easier for companies to sell goods and services than to find concrete ways to redress past harms or address current discriminatory practices. Still, I am encouraged by the swift public response when companies go too far. It’s a reminder that we can play a key role in demanding better from those that drop the ball.”

–Dr. Keisha N. Blain, professor Africana studies and history at Brown University 

What would be the best possible reason for the hashtag Juneteenth to go viral? 

“The best reason for #Juneteenth to go viral [would be] Black Americans actually receiving meaningful reparations for the enslavement of our ancestors, because we know that will not happen in 2022. The second best reason for #Juneteenth to go viral [would be] the announcement that the rich history of Black Americans since they were brought to these shores in bondage, will be taught in schools. No longer just a paragraph about Martin Luther King and how enslaved Africans were akin to migrant workers, all students would learn how we built this country. I don’t see that happening either, so how about #Juneteenth goes viral because all Black people get the Friday closest to June 19th off from work? Just us.”

–April Reign, equity and inclusion advocate, and creator of #OscarsSoWhite

What is the single most important thing to get right about Juneteenth as a journalist?

“Journalists should speak of Juneteenth as an ‘is’ instead of a ‘was.’ It’s not a siloed moment of history. What it represents—the willfully delayed emancipation of Black people—speaks directly to this perilous time and the denial of our rights. It must also be framed within the context of anti-CRT/American history laws that will gut the significance of Juneteenth by erasing from libraries and classrooms the nearly 250 years of chattel slavery that preceded it.”

–Renée Graham, journalist and opinion columnist for the Boston Globe 

What’s funny about Juneteenth? 

“It’s ‘hilarious’ that we finally have a national holiday to celebrate our freedom, yet we’re still not truly free.”

–Yvette Nicole Brown, actress (Big Shot) and TV host

If you were making a playlist called Juneteenth, what 10 songs would be on it?  

Alright - Kendrick Lamar

A Chance to Say My Piece - Taylor McFerrin

Formation - Beyoncé

This Is America - Childish Gambino

My People…Hold On - Eddie Kendricks

Can You See? - Madison McFerrin

Every Nigga Is a Star - KeiyaA

Say It Loud - I’m Black and I'm Proud - James Brown

Post Black Anyway - THEESatisfaction

Baltimore - Nina Simone

–Madison McFerrin, singer/songwriter

Why is Juneteenth important to you as a mother? 

“Black history is American history. But in our house, what I tell my daughter is that Black history is also a master class in hope. To me, Juneteenth matters because it says: ‘Keep going, the future you want is coming.’”

–Veronica Chambers, editor of narrative projects at The New York Times, and author of Shirley Chisholm is a Verb

by Rebecca Carroll

Why Everyone Online is Having Such a Ball Trashing Amber Heard

I believe Amber Heard. I can’t make you believe her if you don’t. But for fuck’s sake, this case isn’t some metaphorical trip to Vegas where everything you do and say about this trial will stay there. It has already made the world a much scarier place for people who’ve been targeted by abusers, and a much friendlier place for abusive assholes who are right now selecting their next victims. Survivors don’t ever get a vacation from our trauma. So you don’t get a vacation from trying to teach yourself to care.

---

Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, educator, activist, and the founder and Executive Director of EducateUS: SIECUS In Action, a brand-new advocacy organization working to build a national movement of sex-ed voters. She is the creator of four books, including her latest, Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World. (Photo by Gene Reed)

by The Meteor

Min Jin Lee on Justice for Asian Americans

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Min Jin Lee has been sounding the alarm on the startling rise of anti-Asian violence for the last few years. And the award-winning author has been unapologetically “extra Asian” lately. In March of this year, on the one-year anniversary of the tragic shooting at a spa in Atlanta where eight people (six of them Asian women) were killed, Lee helped organize a nationwide #BreaktheSilence action demanding justice for Asian women. Through tears, she addressed the rally in Times Square: ”We have read the data, but I want to know how you are doing in light of such dismal and terrifying hate?” 

The data paints a grim picture: the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that anti-Asian hate crimes were up 339% in 2021. In light of these startling statistics, actor, writer, activist, and Meteor founding member Amber Tamblyn wanted to hear from Lee—and understand how non-Asians can be allies. They sat down to talk about anti-Asian violence, movement-building, and what it means to create a culture of “grace.”

Amber: I've seen [the work] you’re doing to expose racism and violence—which is permeating both our culture and literally our streets, against Asian American elders. And I wonder if you would just talk a little bit about that and your experience fighting to bring more awareness to the violence that is happening in your community right now?

Min Jin: I think that is one of the reasons why I am speaking so consistently about the insult and the assault and the murders of Asians and Asian Americans in this country right now. There's been an upsurge of such violence in the past several years, especially in light of the Trump administration. However, this kind of discrimination and exclusion has been happening, even by the state, ever since Asians and Asian Americans have been in this country. 

Amber: I’ve read that the Asian American community in the US is one of the lowest communities to report violence and to report these assaults. And I was shocked by that statistic, but I [realize] it's not so simple, [because] of the complicated relationship our country has with its police force.

Min Jin: There are so many, many poor immigrants in this country who are terrified of speaking up for fear of affecting their immigration status, for fear of affecting their jobs. And [many] even think that they don't have the right to complain. They come from countries in which political persecution is so commonplace. [So] very often the victims won't come forward for fear of persecution—and the persecution may not exist, but in their minds, it's quite present. 

So one of the things that I'm just trying to do is to bring greater awareness, to talk about it when I can. I'm asking the media to please pay attention to this situation. Part of it is representation, and part of it is telling the truth about how the economic disparity in our community is so, so wide. We have the poorest people in America, and we have some of the wealthiest people in America. So the idea [that] all Asian Americans are wealthy and educated is so completely, statistically, factually untrue. And if I could bring that to bear, then maybe I've done a little bit of truth-telling.

Amber: Watching the work that you have created in the last couple of years—both as a writer and a researcher, at the nexus of thrilling storytelling and unearthing these really hard truths—has been pretty profound. This is where, in my mind, for women, it’s not really a luxury to write about these things: This is not a hobby; this is an act of survival. How do you feel about that statement? 

Min Jin: I think the word “survival” is so important because right now we are seeing girls and women under threat—especially poor girls and poor women, and that cuts across race, and it cuts across boundaries, and regions. We're seeing political actors trying so hard to destroy the lives of girls and women. And I guess that's the reason why I feel rather impassioned to make sure that our alliances get stronger, not [made] weaker by minor differences that we can definitely talk out.

Amber: I love that so much. And I needed to hear that because it has been a hard couple of years, as it has been for everybody. Obviously, I've dealt with my own feelings about the movement-building process and activist spaces that feel like we're just ripping each other apart without the context of nuance and how difficult this work is. There is a world out there that just wants us not to exist and not to thrive. And also on a deeper, sadder level, not to love each other.

What you just said reminded me of this episode [of the On Being podcast] I just listened to [featuring] my friends Tarana Burke and Ai-Jen Poo. And there's a thing that Tarana said: "I don't think we can have movements that have liberation politics that don't have a politic of grace."

Min Jin: Amen. It should be exactly as Tarana Burke said, a “liberation ethic,” because it's not just me getting whatever men get. It's actually for all of us to be free to be who we're supposed to be. And that's a very revolutionary point of view.

Amber Tamblyn: What I've learned is, in any [movement] work, there's a very delicate balance between honoring the wisdom and experience of your elders, and also breaking free of that to find what is important and needed in the current culture and climate.

Min Jin: Well, it's funny, I'm 53 years old. I'm the middle girl of three girls in my family. My mother always worked and she earned money for our family, which was important. But then also I felt that our father really supported our full capacity as young women. So very often people talk about the patriarchy of East Asian Confucian cultures, and obviously, true. But my father— because he has three girls—I think he ended up feeling like, yes, I want you to be able to cook well. Which is obviously sexist. And yet, he also felt like you should be able to do whatever you want to do because my girls are the best.

He used to say, "Oh if a boy doesn't want to marry you or date you because you're smart and you're educated, know this: He will have dumb children." 

Amber: Oh shit. That's amazing.

Min Jin: Right? But my dad said that! I grew up in a very feminist household. So I'm always surprised when people say things about Asians and Asian Americans being sexist, because I'm like, "Well, that wasn't my experience."

Amber: That brings me to my [last] question that I wanted to ask you personally, but also for anyone reading this interview who's also upset and outraged by [the rise of anti-Asian violence]. What is a very simple way to be more involved, to be more engaged? 

Min Jin: The Alliance is an organization that supports victims [of anti-Asian violence] who wish to come forward. If they don't have money for a lawyer, they have all these pro bono lawyers who are willing to do it. But very often the victims will not come forward. I think that you understand this very well as somebody who cares about the Me Too movement, [but] very often Asians and Asian-Americans are not believed. So, first of all, can you believe it when someone tells you, I'm afraid to take the subway, I'm afraid to walk down the street because somebody might attack me in a poor neighborhood? Secondly, find the [political] candidates who care about the core of your community.

The third thing is really simple: Sometimes, if you feel like it, you could offer to walk your friend somewhere. Sometimes it is a matter of reaching out, talking to the person who feels deeply ignored, [and] making him, or her, or them visible in your life. There are moments in recognition that we can give to each other, which can build a world and counteract all that cruelty. 

Amber: I love that. What gives you hope about the future? 

Min Jin: Well, I'm a mother and I'm a professor of young people, so the next generation obviously gives me hope. And what also gives me hope is that I come from a long history of women who are fighting for good things. And it's so important to understand that we're not alone in this. For me, I keep thinking about how many beautiful friendships I have found in the movement, [and] how many people I really adore, whose laughter I speak to when I'm having a hard time. Having a shared, common purpose is a wonderful way to build friendships. So that gives me a lot of hope.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

by The Meteor

The Rest of the Story Behind America's Labor Movement

By Esther Wang

Labor journalist Kim Kelly’s new book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, comes at the perfect time, as enthusiasm for labor unions is at the highest point in decades, and workers from Amazon warehouses to Starbucks stores are demanding more—better pay, dignity on the job, and a say in their workplace. Her book goes beyond the simplified history we’re exposed to in textbooks (and that’s if we’re lucky) to tell a fuller, and therefore more true, story of the labor movement, as well as our country. Her message? “This is your history, too,” Kelly said. “And it’s also our future.”

Esther Wang: You started off your book by acknowledging the enormous debt the labor movement owes to women—immigrant women from countries all over the world, Black women, and queer and trans women. Why did it feel necessary and important to tell those stories?

Kim Kelly: I wanted to focus specifically on women just because we're so often left out of the equation when it comes to writing about labor and labor history and the idea of the working class and what a worker looks like in this country. There's this enduring avatar of the working class in this country that is the straight white guy and a hard hat. And he belongs here, he's done a lot of great work, too. My dad is that guy. But if you look at the actual composition of the labor movement, the most common face of a union member in this country is a Black woman who probably works in home health care or domestic work. It's not even a shift—it's kind of always been like that.

You include the stories of labor activists like Dorothy Bolden, Rosa Flores, and Ella May Wiggins. What would it mean for all of us if we looked to those women as labor leaders from the past? 

I think it would reframe a lot of the perceptions of what organized labor and collective power look like. Dorothy Lee Bolden started working as a domestic worker when she was nine years old. She's visually impaired. She grew up in the forties and fifties in the South as a Black woman. So she had every possible disadvantage, but she managed to overcome those obstacles that were unfairly thrown her way. She made history in a way that was so incredible, the way that she organized and worked and advocated for domestic workers [as the founder of the National Domestic Workers Union of America].  At its height, it had about 10,000 members. They organized to win fair wages and to professionalize household work. They were people that were seen as unorganizable. And they're like, well, we'll just organize ourselves.

Ella May Wiggins, who died on the picket line, who was this balladeer who was the heart and soul of a strike down in Gastonia, she's another Joe Hill. She's another Billy Bragg. Rosa Flores was this 18-year-old woman who ended up being the face of an entire massive strike for being this militant presence, for seeing what the world offered her as a young Chicana woman and was like, well, that's not good enough.

That is the kind of energy that we need to be bringing to the labor movement. That's the kind of energy that it always had, but it's been buried under white patriarchal bullshit.

You make it so clear and so apparent that labor issues, workers’ rights, and the fight for a union are intertwined with so many other issues—Black liberation, immigrant rights, feminist battles, disability rights. They’re not silos. 

One of the greatest truths that we have found to be evident over and over and over again throughout the history of labor and work in this country is that solidarity between workers is the greatest weapon that we have. And solidarity means obviously standing up for people that are on your side, but also people that maybe don't look like you or talk like you or come from the same background, but are also dealing with the ravages of capital, dealing with bad bosses, dealing with mistreatment.

I think every story is a labor story because wherever you're coming from, wherever you're going, whoever you are, you've probably either had a job or you have a job now, or you're going to have a job. And that common ground really is a uniting force.

There’s so much momentum and energy in labor right now, stemming from the successful Amazon unionization drive, the workers organizing Starbucks, the mining families on strike that you've been following for more than a year in Alabama at Warrior Met Coal. How are you thinking about what's happening?

History is being made right now, from Amazon to Starbucks, to Appalachian coal mines, and in North Hollywood strip clubs. There's momentum. And I think it's just been very inspiring for folks that maybe for a long time thought there wasn't any hope, or maybe thought that there wasn't any room for them in the labor movement. To go back to Amazon and Starbucks, those movements have been led predominantly by Black workers and workers of color, young queer workers, a lot of women, nonbinary people—the exact workers that common wisdom or whatever has told us are not organizable. They are organizing, and they're winning.

by Esther Wang

On turning women's pain into entertainment

By Tracy Clark-Flory

This week brought the finale of Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, a limited-series dramedy about the leak of a private sex tape that none of us should know anything about. We’re talking eight whole episodes reenacting the '90s-era theft and viral spread of an explicit home movie starring celebrities Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. That’s more than five hours of television devoted to replaying a privacy violation.

The tape’s leak in 1995 was paradigm-shifting and emblematic of a cultural moment, so it’s possible to imagine a worthwhile critical retrospective. Instead, Pam & Tommy is less a reconsideration of the leak than a nostalgic reliving of it. It’s less about the tape than of the tape, which ushered in an ongoing era of stolen moments treated as entertainment.

Anderson and Lee's video was historic as the first celebrity sex tape, spawning dozens of direct imitations, but also setting the stage for whole new privacy violations, like the 2014 hack targeting famous women’s nudes (a.k.a “The Fappening”). The tape’s leak teed up an explosion of nonconsensual entertainment online—and not just starring celebrities. Soon, everyday women had to reckon with the public humiliation of everything from “upskirting” videos to “revenge porn.” Fast forward over two decades and the majority of states have had to legally address nonconsensual pornography (or nonconsensual image abuse, as some experts now call it). The next challenging legal frontier: “deepfake porn”, where a person’s face is seamlessly swapped onto pornographic material. 

But let's be clear: leaked sex tapes aren’t really about sex. The most famous ones—as with Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian—are defined by entitlement, trespass, violation, and embarrassment, vis-à-vis a woman. This is a fundamental part of the attraction: these videos provide forbidden access. Kevin Blatt, a self-described celebrity sex tape broker, says the appeal is seeing something you “weren't supposed to see.” Even when there are questions about a sex tape being leaked for fame and publicity, there's still the suspension of disbelief that allows viewers the fantasy of crossing boundaries, of getting what is not freely given. The entire meaning of the tape changes if a woman intentionally and openly participates in its creation and release. 

We’re living in a cultural moment of re-evaluation around the sexism of the ‘90s and ‘00s, which no doubt helped greenlight Pam & Tommy, but the show’s true impulse is to laugh and wax nostalgic

Pam & Tommy itself adds another layer of non-consent to the original violation of the tape’s leak: Anderson wanted nothing to do with the series. (While Lee has voiced support for Pam and Tommy, Anderson reportedly finds its release “very painful.”) The show was made anyway—and then promoted as “feminist” for being sympathetic to her experience. 

In reality, the show identifies at the start with Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen), the contractor who stole the tape after remodeling the couple’s mansion. We’re given a comedic, rollicking justification for the theft: Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) is an over-the-top asshole clad in a banana hammock who barks unreasonable orders at Rand. These early episodes are driven by laughs—take the scene where Tommy has a conversation with his own penis, which talks back via cringey animation. 

We’re living in a cultural moment of re-evaluation around the sexism of the ‘90s and ‘00s, which no doubt helped greenlight Pam & Tommy, but the show’s true impulse is to laugh and wax nostalgic.  

The series does eventually get around to inviting identification with Pam (Lily James), instead of literal and figurative dicks. It depicts Pam’s struggle to be taken seriously as an actor as her Baywatch lines are cut to prioritize zoomed-in shots of her butt. After the sex tape is leaked, Pam & Tommy spotlights her pain, portraying Pam as having a devastating miscarriage amid the stress of the violation. 

In many of the moments of Pam’s emotional fallout, the show and the tape uncomfortably converge. Pam & Tommy feels like an unintentional meta-commentary on the many ways we are entitled to, and entertained by, women’s pain—not just with leaked sex tapes but also with limited-run TV series dramatizing leaked sex tapes. 

Pam & Tommy is less a reconsideration of the leak than a nostalgic reliving of it. It’s less about the tape than of the tape, which ushered in an ongoing era of stolen moments treated as entertainment

Eventually, Anderson is shown in a brutal and shaming deposition for her lawsuit against Penthouse’s Bob Guccione, as she tries to stop the magazine from publishing stills from the tape. She is cross-examined about her sex life and even forced to watch parts of the tape in a room packed with men. We’re meant to feel outraged, but that outrage arrives after Pam & Tommy has already had its giddy fun. 

The tone-deafness of the first half of the series is only matched by the inappropriateness of its handling of partner violence. Though it’s not depicted in the series, Lee was sentenced in 1998 to six months in jail for felony spousal abuse following an incident in which Anderson accused him of kicking her while she held her 7-week-old son; she had “a broken fingernail and red marks on her back,” according to police. 

The series portrays several early red flags in the relationship—like Tommy calling Pam non-stop and following her uninvited on a trip to Mexico—but treats them as fun material. Pam & Tommy leaves Lee’s arrest, and their divorce, as a literal postscript at the end of the series. It’s a sanitized version of events, referring only to “a physical fight in the couple’s kitchen.” Hulu has cheekily promoted the show as “the greatest love story ever sold.”

All these years later, it’s tempting to believe that we have enough perspective to critically revisit this long-ago sex tape leak and other misogynies of yore. Instead, the last two decades have created a convenient new cover for exploitation: Pam & Tommy delights in replaying the violation, only to abruptly pivot toward superficial wokeness. It makes claims of a redemptive narrative while risking retraumatizing one of its subjects. Ultimately, the show is an accidental testament to the many ways women’s suffering is consumed as entertainment.

You can call it “reflection,” but we’re not nearly as far away from these events as we might like to think.

Tracy Clark-Flory is the author of the coming-of-age memoir Want Me: A Sex Writer's Journey into the Heart of Desire (Penguin, 2021), a New York Times “notable” book and NPR best book of the year. For over 15 years, Clark-Flory has reported on feminism, gender, pop culture, and sex.

by The Meteor

What does a Black agenda look like?

“The glaring omission of Black experts is so commonplace across Western society that it has become normalized,” writes Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman in the opening pages of The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System. A graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, wants to raise her hand and ask one monumental question: “why public discourse about a global pandemic, which disproportionately impacted Black communities, was largely absent of Black perspectives.” The collection of essays she compiles explores the "convergence of at least three pandemics: Covid-19, racism, and state-sanctioned police violence," and how each of those things affects sectors like climate change, tech, and healthcare in Black communities. (In one expansive section about the climate crisis, Dr. Marshall Shepherd writes, "Ultimately, however, the weather-climate gap will not disappear until racial wealth inequality disappears.”) 

So what does a Black agenda look like? Let's talk to the editor!

Shannon Melero: The Black Agenda kicks off by noting that historically, Black experts are only ever called upon for things specifically about the Black community—or when someone is trying to get their DEI initiative up and running. There was a slight shift in this during the summer of 2020, which you write about. Have you noticed any change in the academic or research community moving toward no longer pigeonholing Black experts two years into the pandemic?

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman: No. No. (Laughing) And it’s really because at the end of the day, as Doctor Tressie McMillan Cottom said recently, institutions can’t love you. Right? They’re things. And it’s no surprise. What I always tell people to keep in mind, with academic institutions, in particular, is that they were never built with Black and Brown people in mind. Harvard was founded in the 1600s. Where were Black people in the 1600s? So the way I really look at it is that, yes, institutions can’t love me. They won’t serve me. But that being said, I’m still going to push these institutions to at least see me, to hear me. Because at the end of the day, even if they aren’t hearing me, someone is listening, right? 

One thing I noticed as a thread joining all of the essays was the argument for reparations. But what would you say is that one thing that brings all these experts’ concepts together? 

Oh, reparations. I hadn’t even thought about it from that perspective, but you’re right, it does come up a lot. But I actually think the more salient or more obvious trend between the essays is criminal justice. 

Just to be clear, nobody talked to each other before writing their essay. But as you see, criminal justice comes up again and again and again. Because at the end of the day, that is the root of a lot of the problems. If you already don’t see Black life as life, we have a problem. We can’t talk about voting rights. We can’t talk about health care reparations; we can’t talk about diversity in the workforce; we can’t talk about the future of work in the U.S. if you don’t think Black people are people. 

And so the way that manifests is criminalizing Black people for existing. I can’t just be Black and exist because that is illegal. As I talk about this, I’m just thinking about what happened with Kim Potter recently. She basically got a slap on the wrist and the judge cried! 

The statistic that shook me, and it still shocks me, is that out of 17,500 police killings between 2005 and 2021, only 140 officers were indicted in murder or manslaughter charges. That’s less than one percent! That’s actually 0.8 percent, to be precise. And the question becomes, well, when it’s fundamentally criminal to be Black in America, how does that spill over into every other sector of society? It’s illegal to be Black in America, and for some reason, that’s not top of mind for everybody. 

So I guess the next logical question is, what’s the plan? It feels like this has been an ongoing battle for hundreds of years. How can we change this perspective, and is it even something that’s going to be accomplished in our lifetime? 

I think it can. And I think it will be led by young people, I think we are going to be the ones to push against this idea in a very real way. That’s why you’re seeing such a visceral reaction. There are a lot of people who are trying to get rid of Black voting rights—I mean, it’s a coordinated effort that is giving Battleship precision, right?

There are entire generations of people who are sick of it. You’re seeing this [anger] in millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, and all of the people coming up after them. This is why you have this entire fight around what’s going to be taught in schools, however, because people [in power] understand that once young people find the truth, it changes everything. We saw that with Gen Z. 

And what does implementing that level of change look like according to The Black Agenda?

It looks like putting Black people at the helm of conversation and having them lead the way. And that’s not at the expense of any other group. I think a lot of times people argue that if you’re centering one group of people, it means you don’t like anybody else. But who said that? What we’re saying is, what groups have it worse off? The group that is worse off should probably be leading the conversation around solutions because if a solution works for them, it’ll probably work for everyone else. 

I can't just be Black and exist because that is illegal.

Now when we talk about agenda items in the book, what we’re saying is that with the way that things are going, Black lives have to be fully realized first and foremost. The fact that Black lives do matter is not something that should be up for debate, but right now it is up for debate. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Like, what do you mean? This isn’t debatable. The Black Agenda basically feeds off of the idea that if we know that Black life matters, we can address how the climate crisis is affecting Black lives, we can address health inequities, we can address how climate crises are affecting Black lives. 

But you have to agree that Black life matters first. If you can’t agree with that fact then all of the other solutions proposed in the book are moot. The first step is you agreeing that Black people are people.

by Shannon Melero-Urena