"We wanted to write ourselves back into history"
  October 1, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, Tonight is the big showdown between vice presidential candidates J.D. keep-women-in-the-kitchen Vance and Tim I-support-trans-youth Walz. (What long middle names these guys have!) It’s sure to be an exciting war of words—and we can’t wait. Speaking of, we are 34 days away from the election. Today, in partnership with several incredible outlets and organizations like Teen Vogue, Feminist, Betches, and more, we have helped launch a new voting initiative: Get Ready With Us (#GRWU). The goal behind GRWU is to make sure women and LGBTQ+ voters have everything they need to hit the polls on election day. Voting early? We can help. Not sure if you’re registered at the correct address? We got you. Don’t remember where your polling place is? Babe, no worries. We’ll hold your hand through it all. The only thing you need to think about is what you’ll be wearing and whether or not it will clash with your I Voted sticker or the outfit of the friend you are dragging with you to the polls (I’m going with a dramatic all-black motif to mark the death of the Trump Reich.) Click the image below to learn more!  Getting ready, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
 Authors Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone on “liberating” the history of this very common procedure Despite everything we know about abortion, myths persist. So when our brilliant podcast collaborators Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone, announced that they were writing a book about the past, present, and future of abortion, it only made sense to slap that pre-order button faster than you can say dilation and curettage. And today, that book is finally in our clutches! So we asked the authors three questions about how they set the record straight on the suppressed history of abortion in America. Both of you are bona fide abortion experts, and one would assume you know pretty much everything there is to know about the subject. Was there anything you learned while researching the book that surprised you? Or anything that felt new to you? Renee Bracey Sherman: Ha! Well, I don’t know if we know everything, but we have really learned a lot….What surprised me most was how openly abortion pills were marketed in newspapers in the 1800s. We scoured digitized newspapers throughout the 1800s and found tons of ads for tansy and pennyroyal pills, “female beans,” “preventative powders,” “Portuguese female pills,” and Madam Restell’s powders and pills…They were available over the counter and via mail to anyone who wanted them. Today, abortion organizations constantly have to fight censorship from billboard companies [and] social media sites just to be able to post about abortion pills. And the idea of abortion pills being available over the counter is treated like a pipedream. But when we look back in history, we actually already did it. What is considered visionary was commonplace 200 years ago. Regina Mahone: One of my favorite conversations was with Dr. Jamila Perritt, the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. We talked with Dr. Perritt about how OB-GYNs don’t talk to their patients about sex. And it’s so true. I can’t remember a single conversation with any of the many gynos I’ve had over the years where the conversation was about my sex life unrelated to a medical diagnosis. None of my doctors—and I’ve had two kids, a miscarriage, and an abortion—have asked, “How is your sex life going?” Of course, so much of that is rooted in this idea that we shouldn’t be having sex for pleasure, so we shouldn’t talk about sex or sexual health in a way that would encourage people engaging in those acts to learn more about their bodies to ensure they are developing healthy and satisfying experiences…That, to me, was super interesting and depressing but also kind of liberating. Because now, I will be asking my doctors about sex and their response will tell me whether I will continue being their patient. One thing I feel I learned from this book is the degree to which Black women have historically led the charge in reproductive rights. But when I look at how the issue is positioned today, we mainly find white women and their stories at the center. How did we get from the reality to the perception of it sort of belonging to white women? RBS: This is the exact reason we wrote the book. We wanted to write ourselves back into history. We wanted to correct the record to show that we have been here, doing this, and we can do this for whatever is next. When I had my abortion, I saw abortion being debated on the news a lot, but it was always between white people, usually an older white woman and a white priest. I didn’t see myself as part of the conversation. But when I started learning about reproductive justice, a framework created by Black women to center the experiences of people of color and the intersections of our identities, I realized there was a whole world out there that I wasn’t being told. When we wrote the book, we found tons of brilliant Black and Brown people and their traditions who had been overlooked in favor of elevating the same few white heroines. This is an incorrect telling of history, but also it makes people feel like they don’t belong. In order to build a reproductive justice future and liberate abortion, we have to ensure everyone feels welcome and sees themselves reflected. RM: Black women have been having and providing abortions since people have been getting pregnant, but our leadership on this issue was decimated in the late 19th century as a result of the American Medical Association’s racist crusade against abortion. AMA doctors labeled midwives, many of whom were Black and immigrant women during this period, barbaric and quacks and successfully pushed them out of the reproductive and maternal health fields in order for white male doctors at the AMA to “professionalize” the OB-GYN field—in other words, to make the field inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t a white man. Medical professionals were also experimenting on Black and Brown communities, which made folks rightfully skeptical of seeking any care. Even so, Black people have continued to provide abortions and advocate for deregulation, but their work is often erased from abortion histories or included as footnotes rather than being centered in the storytelling. There have been disparities in representation, funding, and systemic-level discrimination that have given people of color disadvantages when it comes to the optics of the movement. The subtitle of the book includes the phrase “reclaiming our history.” What do you mean by that? RM: For far too long our stories have been overlooked or erased. Think about Jane, the network of volunteers working as part of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union before Roe to ensure women had access to safe abortion procedures. Abortion rights activists have been told the story of Jane over and over. But rarely do we hear about the Black women who organized and volunteered, or from their perspective, why they felt it was important to be part of the abortion rights movement. The problem with not telling that history is it suggests that Black people weren’t part of the movement for abortion liberation. Worse, it makes us—Black people—think that only white women have done this advocacy when Black women have been doing it. …We deserve to feel connected to the advocates who came before us. RBS: This was one of the most important aspects of our book and our main motivation for writing it. When he wrote the Dobbs decision, Justice Alito wrote that abortion was not part of the tradition of this country, but that is a bald-faced lie. He rewrote history into the Supreme Court record to fit his own agenda. Abortion is deeply woven into this country’s history—the entire world’s. What’s the old adage? You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you come from. We wanted to put all of the history that we could find into one place together so we could see the connections between our peoples over thousands of years. It was so clear that abortion is ours. It has always been ours. It’s time we reclaim that—and now we have the stories and facts to prove it.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
What Have We Learned from 20 Years of Grey's Anatomy?
A lot, actually!
BY SCARLETT HARRIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOFJiFOwFuM&pp=ygUOZ3JleSdzIGFuYXRvbXk%3D
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but this week, the ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy began its 21st season, making it the longest-running primetime medical show in history. Perhaps you gave up on the show after the death of the much-beloved Dr. George O’Malley. Or after the death of Day One love interest, Dr. Derek Shepherd. Or maybe you had to take a long break after Dr. Izzie Stevens had a full-blown love affair with a literal ghost to reflect on what exactly you were watching.
The brainchild of screen queen Shonda Rhimes, Grey’s has, over the course of its 20-year run, gone from a steamy Thursday-night soap about interns having sex in various hospital closets to a groundbreaking, history-making medical drama that reflects the world we live in—for better and for worse.
Like most medical shows that came before (and, indeed, afterward), the central characters, a group of first-year interns, were majority white, with the exception of Sandra Oh, who played the now-iconic Dr. Cristina Yang. But what was revolutionary about the show, even in its infancy, was its portrayal of hospital leadership composed entirely of Black doctors, all of whom were given unique stories with the kind of depth and complexity normally reserved for young white ingenues. These characters—chief of surgery Dr. Richard Weber (James Pickens Jr.), chief of cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington), and the interns’ direct manager, Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson)—were not shoved to the side as in most prime-time procedurals. They were refreshingly and, in true Shondaland fashion, essential in driving the larger story forward.
Rhimes herself has bristled at the term “diversity,” arguing that her shows “normalize” seeing different kinds of identities on-screen. “[‘Diversity’] suggests something… other, as if it is something… special. Or rare. As if there is something unusual about telling stories involving women and people of color and LGBTQ characters on TV,” she said in 2015. “We changed the faces that you see on television. And it should not have taken so long for that to happen,” she added in an interview with Variety in 2021.
While much of the original cast has departed in the two decades since Grey’s Anatomy premiered, Rhimes’ ethos has remained a constant. Grey’s broke ground by hosting the longest-running lesbian character in Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) and, in recent years, has also upped its transgender representation with several trans and non-binary doctors, including Dr. Casey Parker (Alex Blue Davis) and Dr. Kai Bartley (E.R. Fightmaster).
The series has also managed to stand the test of time thanks to its outlandish medical cases and the plethora of patients who have cycled through Seattle Grace/Seattle Grace Mercy West/Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (phew, I think I need an attractive doctor to check my vitals after writing that!). These cases have allowed the show to expose the gaps in care in the American medical health system. In one storyline, the show’s namesake, Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), commits insurance fraud to provide lifesaving medical care to an uninsured cancer patient. And while the idea that a doctor would risk their career to save a life feels like a fantasy, Grey has long served as a sort of avatar for medical care providers nationwide who have gone above and beyond the call of duty.
Medical racism has also been a focal point in the series, specifically through the experiences of Dr. Bailey. In season four, she is forced to save the life of a white supremacist who refuses to be operated on by her or the other available doctor, Dr. Yang; then in season 14, shey had the too-common experience of having her pains dismissed by other medical professionals, only to later discover she was having a heart attack. Black women are more likely than any other group to report being discriminated against by healthcare professionals. “You’re either accused of being a hypochondriac, or you can get dismissed if it appears you know too much,” Bailey’s portrayer Wilson told People magazine at the time.
And then there’s abortion—a word that 20 years ago you were hard-pressed to find uttered on TV…except on Grey’s. In season one, Dr. Yang had an unplanned pregnancy. She’s in the middle of her first intern year, so it’s a no-brainer that she would terminate. But before she can go in for the procedure, she has a miscarriage. Yes, that was a bit of a cop-out—convenient miscarriage is a common pop culture trope—but Rhimes later said that she was pressured by the network to go the miscarriage route. Seven years later, Rhimes got the ultimate say: Dr. Yang did go on to have an abortion in season eight.
Meanwhile, staunch reproductive-rights defender, Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh), an OBGYN, served as a proxy for the show’s unapologetic stance on abortion. Her character is routinely shown performing abortions on her patients, including a second-term one (which a pro-life character calls a “partial birth abortion”) in her spin-off Private Practice in 2011. A more recent storyline sees Montgomery and Bailey running an abortion-mobile, driving to meet pregnant people whose reproductive rights have been severely limited post-Dobbs.
Fine, Grey’s skeptics—I’ll admit that the show might occasionally veer into the fantastical (do doctors really have that much sex in on-call rooms or are they busy, you know, saving lives?). But it’s been bringing medical education, feminism and patient rights awareness to millions for 20 years. They’re allowed a little ghost lovin’ every now and then.
Scarlett Harris is a culture critic, author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment, and editor of The Women Of Jenji Kohan.
Can the Taliban Be Taken to Court?
  September 26, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, I’ve never been much of a space gal, (stars are for figuring out your life path, not like, science or whatever), but there is a black hole that is “spitting energy across 23 million light-years of intergalactic space.” And if that doesn’t put whatever’s happening here on Earth in perspective, I’m not sure what will. In today’s newsletter, we look at the big news out of the United Nations General Assembly, a brand-new Emmy winner, and an assault on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Plus, a bit of weekend reading. Just a little speck, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
AND:
 WEEKEND READING 📚On birth: Approximately 20,000 babies have been born in Gaza in the last year. Mothers have been delivering in dangerous conditions, and “four-month-olds understand what airstrikes are.” (Marie Claire) On coming back: One of the most intellectually honest writers of our time, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has a few words for you. (Intelligencer) On selling out: Puerto Rican rappers have been surprising some of their audiences by throwing their support behind a certain orange demon. But considering the protections that proximity to whiteness brings white presenting Latine rappers, is it really all that surprising? (Refinery29)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
There Haven't Been This Many Conflicts Since WWII
  September 24, 2024 Queridas lectoras, Quiero desearles a todos un feliz Mes de Herencia Hispane y Latine. Sé que somos mas que un solo idioma, pero es una de las cosas que nos unen a muchos de nosotros. Eso y tambien siglos de opresión. Un tema para un día diferente 🤷🏼♀️. In today’s newsletter, we look at the attacks in Lebanon, learn more about Project 2025’s plans for the planet, and celebrate a new world record holder. In love and Spanglish, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONOne more war: According to Vision of Humanity, there are 56 ongoing armed conflicts right now around the world—more than at any time since World War II. And over the last few days, one of them, the conflict in Lebanon, has become more deadly, with strikes from the Israeli military rattling the country. Nearly 600 people have been killed, including 50 children; nearly 2000 have been injured, and thousands more are now being displaced by violence. Israel says it is targeting the militant group Hezbollah, but the casualties are mainly civilian, and this should surprise no one—90 percent of wartime deaths are. And just as in every other zone of conflict, it is the women and children of Lebanon who will endure the brunt of Israel’s latest offensive. (If Hezbollah’s threats of revenge are to be believed, Israeli women will suffer as well.) It is an endless cycle that has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 women and children since October 7, not to mention the multitude of displaced Palestinians who will soon be joined by their Lebanese counterparts in refugee camps and asylum programs across the globe. It is untenable for Israel and its allies (like the United States) to sustain all these running conflicts, not just from an economic and political perspective, but from a human cost perspective. Women are the main drivers of most economies, but they cannot do that when they’re dead, displaced, or saddled with the disproportionate “secondary and lasting effects of war and conflict,” left behind to raise the orphans, to heal the wounded, to teach at the rubble that was once a school. Last week at Free Future 2024, Dr. Salamishah Tillet explained the paradox of expecting women to end gender-based violence this way: “Women have this unfair burden of being the primary community that's victimized and then that’s also held responsible for stopping the violence. So that paradox is impossible; it means we’re never gonna end the problem because we’re busy healing from the trauma…so if we’re going to end this epidemic, you actually need men and boys central to the movement.” She was speaking of personal assault and not war, but the analogy holds: What we all need now is for the men and boys sitting in war rooms to finally come to the decision that human lives—women’s lives—are worth the strenuous effort it takes to choose the route of diplomacy and compromise. AND:
 DOWER AT THE END OF HER THRU-HIKE (VIA INSTAGRAM)
  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
A Climate Story That Won't Depress You
Because that's not how Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson rolls.
BY CINDI LEIVE
Someone recently described Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson to me as a “magical human being,” which makes sense: She’s a marine biologist who somehow makes very dense climate science accessible, and she’s also a lot of fun (last week, she and actor Jason Sudeikis hosted a climate variety show at the Brooklyn Museum).
But her greatest magic trick is her optimism. In her new book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, a collection of interviews, data, poetry, and more, Dr. Johnson veers off the doom-and-gloom path of much climate coverage to go in a different direction. She talked to me by phone from near her home in Maine while a literal cricket chirped in the background.
Cindi Leive: Your title, What If We Get It Right?, implies that we can get it right—which is kind of a novel idea. So my first question is, do you really believe that?
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: I think the most important part of the title is the question mark! [Laughs.] I think it's important to be clear that getting it right does not mean a perfect world because the climate has already changed. We're going to be experiencing climate impacts regardless of what we do. But there are a wide range of possible futures. And we basically have all the solutions we need: We know how to shift to renewable energy. We know how to improve public transit…We know how to green our buildings. It's not a big mystery what we should do.
You mentioned a wide scenario of possible futures. Can you sketch them for us?
Well, one option is the trajectory that we've been on at least until the last few years, which is just letting the fossil fuel industry win, not reining in extraction and the burning of oil and gas and coal at all, and heading toward a climate apocalypse: the mega-floods mega-droughts, mega-fires, mega-hurricanes version of the future. And that's what we get from media. That's what we get from movies. Most of the content on climate that reaches us is like, It’s a horror story, and it's only going to get worse. And yes, we do want to avoid the worst-case scenario! But if we do all of this work, what do we get? That was my impetus for the book: to show the other side if we implement all the solutions we already have. We could essentially stop the Earth from warming further. We could add many more species living on this planet with us. We could [lessen] sea-level rise. That sounds like not that big a deal, but we're talking about hundreds of millions of people—the largest human migration in history!—who might not have to migrate because of sea-level rise. So the extent to which we rein that in really matters.
I think a lot of people, when they think about preventing climate change, still think that means they have to prioritize the health and well-being of people a couple of generations from now or half the world over above their own well-being. But you don't see it that way at all.
For so long we were told that this is a problem for our grandchildren. And it's not. The dire climate impacts are already upon us. And so the thought that we could just put off action—that ship has sailed. I personally also don't see this through the frame of sacrifice. Because we are already sacrificing by not doing anything—which is a choice with incredibly horrific consequences. And so doing something is actually the easier and better option and will absolutely pay dividends.
So much of the book is deliciously nerdy—really deep in the weeds of how you make change in so many extremely specific areas. I really liked the interview with Abigail Dillen [a litigator at Earthjustice] because I don't think that people think about the courts as having that much to do with our climate futures.
We absolutely don't think about the Supreme Court generally as a big environmental issue. You know, people have been so rightly horrified by the Dobbs decision overturning Roe versus Wade. We've missed the overturning of the Chevron doctrine which gives agencies deference in sorting out the details of how to implement the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act.
We have three branches of government, and they all have a major possibility to shape, to be blunt, the future of life on Earth. The fact that the United States is the largest emitter, historically, cumulatively, is something that shouldn't be overlooked. We try to blame other countries, but it really is us. So whether we get it right really matters because we set the status quo for policy in other countries.
I also loved the chapter with Ayisha Siddiqa and Xiye Bastida. Sometimes Gen Z activism gets dismissed, like “It's all about these big theatrical gestures and made-for-TikTok protests.” But this was an incredibly intellectually rigorous chapter.
There are a lot of young people who are serious strategists and organizers working on climate, and thank goodness, because we desperately need them. This is a multi-generation-deep movement right now. The biggest thing that came out of that conversation for me was: We really need to support this next generation. Their moral clarity is a compass that we need. When they say, you're setting our future on fire, it’s true, and we need to be accountable to them.
Your last climate book was four years ago. What feels different to you now?
The policy landscape is different. Since that first book was published, we've had the Inflation Reduction Act passed, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed, which is the largest investment in climate solutions in world history. And a lot of things are changing for the better. I have solar panels at my house because of those tax credits.
And this book is also dropping right before an election. How are you thinking about that, up and down the ballot?
First of all, this is a climate election. Who we elect will shape the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. We have at the presidential level, a choice between Donald Trump, who literally offered fossil fuel executives that for $1 billion in campaign donations, he would do their bidding once he got into the White House again. And then you have on the other side Vice President Harris, who was the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act and signed that into law and has been there while things like the American Climate Corps were established, putting tens of thousands of young people to work on climate solutions. And down ballot, it is those local officials, the city council members. public utility commissioners, the school board, and the mayors who are deciding, do we have municipal composting? Are we expanding bike lanes and investing in public transit? Are we, you know, greening and insulating buildings and updating building codes, for example? All that sort of nitty-gritty is where change happens.
I’ve been partnering with the Environmental Voter Project, which was created on the understanding that there are about 10 million environmentalists in the US who have climate as their number one voting issue, who are already registered but who do not regularly vote. So if we can get some of those folks to head to the polls…They have a track record of shifting by percentage points the turnout in key places. If people are looking for a place to plug in before the election, I recommend that. The stakes are so high.
"The Women Who Have Refused to be Broken"
  September 19, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, It’s been an exciting week ‘round these parts. On Tuesday, we spent the day at the Ford Foundation’s Free Future 2024: Preventing Gender Violence Around the World—hearing from incredible leaders, advocates, artists, and one highly decorated gymnast, all working toward a world in which “no one else has to say ‘me too.’ ”  L-R: SOCCER PLAYER FARKHUNDA MUHTAJ; THE HONORABLE HARRIETE CHIGGAI, WOMEN'S RIGHTS ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT OF KENYA; OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST ALY RAISMAN; AND CULTURE CRITIC SORAYA NADIA MCDONALD. (PHOTO BY MONNELLE BRITT) Every speaker brought their own lens and insight—Black Votes Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown reminded us, “There has never been a fundamental movement that has not been held nurtured and girded by…the leadership of women.” Actor and activist Danai Gurira reiterated the importance of turning our focus to the African continent to “amplify the women who have refused to be broken and see a future we all need to follow.” And in a panel on taking the toxic out of masculinity, activist David Hogg noted, “Being a man isn't defined by putting down other people—it’s defined by helping to lift others up and building community.”  L-R: FREE FUTURE HOST SARAH JONES WITH PANELISTS TARANA BURKE, AND DANAI GURIRA. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) The day ended strong with a monologue from performance artist ALOK, who shared what they would say to their younger self: “The reason that people are seeking to oppress you is not because you are weak or fragile; it’s precisely because you are powerful and tremendous.”  THE TREMENDOUS ALOK (PHOTO BY MONNELLE BRITT) If you missed the livestream of the event (cohosted by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, the Skoll Foundation, and us), you can still catch every revelatory word from folks like Tarana Burke, Fatima Goss Graves, Padma Lakshmi, Chase Strangio, Aly Raisman, Darren Walker, and global leaders like Jaha Dukureh of the Gambia, Dr. Emma Fulu of Australia, UN Women’s Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, and more, right here. And watch our Instagram for highlights. Now let’s get into some news! xx Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
 WEEKEND READING 📚On always being there: Steve Burns, the original host of Blue’s Clues, has found a new way to show up for his now adult fans. (The New York Times) On unsolved cases: There are an estimated 21,579 Latinas missing in the United States right now. And authorities have, for the most part, stopped looking for them. (Refinery29) On the “perfect vagina”: A conversation about labiaplasty on reality TV reignited harmful conversations about what a vulva should look like. TikTokers are pushing back. (Teen Vogue)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
"That's Not How It's Gonna Go, Girl"
  September 12, 2024 Bonsoir, Meteor readers, Why the French? Because I’m still luxuriating in the Joan of Arc cosplay Chappell Roan wore for her VMAs performance, along with a red carpet look that would bring a Renaissance painter to their knees.  STARE DIRECTLY INTO OUR SOULS, QUEEN. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In today’s newsletter, we’re talking about the importance of yelling back, how Trump’s lies have harmed Haitians in Ohio, and a little weekend reading. Au revoir, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Not me, bitch”: MTV’s Video Music Awards were last night, and while there were a ton of exciting moments— Megan Thee Stallion’s pet snake; Jordan Chiles and Flava Flav; Taylor Swift just existing; Sabrina Carpenter and that alien— the night really belonged to Miss Chappell Roan, who took home the Moonman for Best New Artist, the first award of her career. But Roan made her mark before the show began. When a photographer on the carpet yelled “shut the fuck up” in her direction, she yelled back, letting him know she wouldn't be spoken to that way. Asked about the exchange later by Entertainment Tonight, Roan said, “I’m not taking this for the rest of my career; I’ve been famous for, like, one month. This is not how it’s gonna go, girl.” The fact that Roan, who is only 26, has the wherewithal to be this staunch about her boundaries, and the career she wants to have, is genuinely inspiring. If you’re under 35 and reading this, you probably grew up in the hyper-voyeuristic post-sex-tape age of celebrity, in which privacy and common decency were in scant supply, and the general feeling was a belief that being a public person means you belong to the public. But stars like Roan, Naomi Osaka, and Billie Eilish have been bucking the system to create a more tenable way to be famous. And while that may not seem like the most important thing in the world, think about the power of saying to millions of young fans that each of us should be entitled to our own private lives and the masters of our narrative. And also just the iconic choice of looking someone in the eye in the middle of a black carpet and screaming, “Not me, bitch!” Iconic. AND:
 WEEKEND READING 📚On restoration: Rebecca Nagle’s new book, By the Fire We Carry, is an intimate dive into a landmark court case that saw the largest return of Indigenous land in U.S. history. Take a look at this excerpt before you head to your local bookshop. (The Intercept) On night life: Queer Latine New Yorkers needed a place to let loose. Thus “Maricón” parties were born. (Remezcla) On the farm: Small Black-owned farms in the South are tackling climate change one crop at a time. (NPR)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
How Do You Season Your Pets?
  September 11, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, I hope you all had a fortuitous bingo night last night. Personally, I am writing a complaint to our bingo card maker for not having the foresight to include a box for “they’re eating cats and dogs in Ohio.” How did you miss such a predictable talking point, Bailey? Get it together. In today’s newsletter, we’re reminiscing about last night, bidding farewell to an icon, and appreciating the childless cat ladies in our lives. Grabbing the pepper grinder, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONCan we even call it a debate?: Back in my day, a debate was an intense, well-researched sparring of words between people who knew what they were talking about, at least most of the time. But that’s not what we watched last night. Instead, the country had a front-row seat to the political equivalent of the final rap battle in 8 Mile. Vice President Harris was armed with razor-sharp attack lines like, “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” all of which were designed to get under Trump’s skin, and all of which worked. And in true Trump fashion, instead of having some sort (or any sort) of game plan, he decided to freestyle. But you’re not a rapper, Don. The felon was flustered, reactionary, fumbling over his words. He wouldn’t look directly at “her” and “she” shut him down swiftly. (His use of the Vice President’s pronouns but never her name or her title felt like classic meant-to-belittle Trump.) Said Harris: “He’s trying to, again, divide and distract from the reality, which is: It is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy. It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one, according to himself.”  And he wasn’t just shut down by his opponent—for once, the moderators were ready with the fact check. When Trump lied and made the debunked argument that Democrats have made it legal to kill babies after birth, Linsey Davis clarified on live TV, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.” When journalists have to explain that infanticide is illegal in America, we’ve really lost the plot. (But if you want to know more about the history of that nasty little myth, Jessica Valenti’s got that here.) So, did we actually learn anything from this debate? The Trump we saw on TV was an angry, uninformed, and unqualified man trying to get a job he was already fired from. No revelations there. The display of Kamala Harris's adaptability, though, feels important and worth noting. The woman we saw last night was not the jovial “Momala” of memes and home cooking videos, but instead the Harris of Congressional hearings—skewering her opponents with sharpness and wit. She was a tactician, fully aware of her enemy and prepared to face him head-on, no matter how many times he tried to pretend she wasn’t in the room. It was satisfying to watch her unleash her master-class psychological jiu jitsu on one of the least likable men of all time. As Jessica Bennett wrote in The New York Times, “she laid bare the smallness of Trump’s manhood and asserted her own power.” There were also the brief moments where we actually got to hear about Harris’s agenda, certainly more than the “concepts of a plan” Trump shared. She gave air time to her stances on increasing child tax credits, restoring abortion rights, and tightening gun laws. Some of her other talking points, however, like support for fracking, maintaining the status quo of foreign relations, and her aversion to an Israeli arms embargo may not have inspired those still undecided. What is unquestionable about the debate, though, is that it was a battle. And as the great poet once said, “This guy don’t wanna battle, he’s shook.” AND:  MADONNA AND CHILD, 2024 (SCREENSHOT VIA INSTAGRAM)
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What Is "Reunification Therapy"?
  September 5, 2024 Good evening, Meteor readers, Yesterday, on my morning drive, I saw a family posing on their stoop with big smiles and a sign proclaiming the first day of school for the four kids in uniforms. Their mom, snapping the photo, directing everyone to squish together, seemed so excited. I thought of that family when, a few hours later, news broke of a school shooting in Georgia—the 385th mass shooting this year, and the 23rd on a K-12 campus. The families at Apalachee High School woke up that day—just like my neighbors—dressing up their children, ready for a fresh start, trusting they’d come home safe. But now, four families are burying a loved one, and a community is irreparably damaged. And the name Apalachee will join Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Columbine, Covenant, Marysville, Oxford, and on, and on, and on. And it feels like all we can do is ask the same questions over and over again: When will prayers become policy? Whose child will be the last straw? If not for them, then for who, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONIt’s okay to separate a child from their abuser, actually: You may have read about the recent case out of Colorado in which a retired police officer who allegedly sexually assaulted his daughters currently walks free, while their mother is going to jail for trying to keep her children away from him. It would be easy to write it off as a one-off miscarriage of justice—but advocates say that it’s actually typical of the way in which family court cases often prioritize the wishes of parents, even if they’re abusive, over the well-being of a child. The backstory is this: The father, a former police officer, faces seven felony charges for allegedly sexually assaulting three of his daughters, as well as one misdemeanor child abuse charge for allegedly attempting to drown his son, who had confronted him over the crimes. He currently seeks custody of his two other, younger children, who live in a domestic violence shelter with their mother. The children have been ordered by the court to attend reunification therapy, a controversial treatment used by family courts to settle custody disputes.  The children’s mother objects to the reunification therapy for several reasons: She believes the father is dangerous, and she worries about the effect the reunification therapy is having on her children. (Therapy sessions have left her children in the fetal position, crying uncontrollably, unable to sleep, and expressing thoughts of self-harm, she says.) So, she attempted to prevent her children from attending these sessions—and is now being held in contempt of court and sentenced to jail time. But she’s not the only one objecting to reunification therapy: The treatment has come under fire from many family court reform and feminist groups, who charge it provides abusive parents continued access to their victims. “Common sense tells us you can’t force a child to have a relationship or force two people to have a relationship if it’s fractured or if there’s no bond in the first place," Tina Swithin, an advocate for family court reform, has said. "Especially in cases where there is abuse, this is further traumatizing these children." Some states have already passed bans and limitations on court-ordered reunification therapy, such as requiring both parents' consent or prohibiting the use of "reunification camps," where children are sent with their alienated parent and cut off from their primary caregiver. But in many cases, its use is still widespread due to what the United Nations Human Rights Council calls "harmful gender stereotypes and discriminatory gender bias among family law judges." “Judges are suspicious about who is making the domestic abuse allegations,” attorney Suzanne Zaccour explained to Ms. “Often the woman might appear 'crazy' because she has suffered the impact of trauma and to them that makes her less credible…It's more comfortable to accept the explanation that women are crazy rather than that many men are violent...Judges cling to the idea that domestic abuse is rare and an exception." Children have a wide array of extremely valid reasons they may not want to remain in contact with a parent. And as long as family courts continue to prioritize reunification at all costs, they’ll quickly find that the cost is the child’s well-being—and, in too many cases, their life. —Bailey Wayne Hundl AND: 
 WEEKEND READING 📚On being left out: There’s a specific group of women feminism forgot about: cheerleaders. (The 19th) On funds: Black women at the helm of abortion funds across the country are bringing reproductive justice to the masses. (Essence) On the sheets: A question for all to consider: “Was casual sex always this bad?” *cough* yes *cough* (The Cut) On the job: Guards at Rikers Island accused of assault are mysteriously still working at the jail. And some of them didn’t even know allegations had been made until journalists started asking questions. (Gothamist)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
A Brief History of "Post-Birth Abortion"
  September 3, 2024 Happy Monduesday, Meteor readers, Some of you are lamenting the end of summer, but me? I am already knitting Christmas sweaters for myself and my child. I hope your entry to fall is smoother than the foam on a white woman’s pumpkin-spiced latte.  In today’s newsletter, we discuss the importance of words and their meanings in conversations about abortion. Plus, more from Project 2025 and an unexpected “counterfeit” endorsement for Kamala Harris. Ho, ho, how long are these sweaters going to take, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONAnti-abortion glossary: Has the term “post-birth abortion” been cropping up a lot lately on your right-wing uncle’s Facebook posts? It’s been in circulation for years, but the fabricated idea it refers to—that Democrats are passing legislation that allows for abortion even past the moment of delivery—was rejuvenated when Trump mentioned it at a Michigan rally last week. “The real radicals on [abortion] are the Democrats where you can have an abortion in the ninth month,” he said. “And in six states, you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born. And you know, one of those states is Minnesota, where this Tampon Tim comes from.” Trump’s fear-mongering was then parrotted by one of his advisors the next day. To be clear, this charge is absolutely false. It is illegal to kill a living child in all 50 states, and it’s sad that we even have to repeat that. But where did the term “post-birth abortion” come from, and how did it get so popular? As writer Jessica Valenti, founder of Abortion, Every Day, explains in a new Meteor series called Anti-Abortion Glossary, Republicans started tossing the idea around after a disastrous radio interview with former Virginia governor Ralph Northam in 2019. Northam had been asked a hypothetical question about whether or not a woman could abort a pregnancy up to the point of labor, and he responded by offering another (all too real) hypothetical: a child born with extreme “deformities” or prematurely who is unable to survive on their own. In that case, parents would have to decide whether to subject a fatally ill newborn to painful, invasive surgeries or to let them die of natural causes.  It’s a nightmare situation, and for some parents, it’s a lived experience. But for GOP pundits, it was political fodder. At the time, Republicans were looking to sink an abortion bill that had just been introduced in Virginia, amending the state’s laws on late-term abortion. Republicans said the bill would legalize infanticide and, especially after Northam’s interview, painted him and other pro-abortion Democrats as “baby killers.” They ground the bill to a halt, turned Northam into a widely shared meme, and made the ridiculous notion of legal infanticide so popular with their base that Ron DeSantis and two women running for office in North Dakota used it. Political doublespeak? No—because "post-birth abortion" exploits the real experiences of the most vulnerable parents and infants for political gain. If the GOP wanted to earnestly talk about what’s killing children in America, perhaps they should look to their gun closets. New episodes of Anti-Abortion Glossary—aimed at dispelling the “infodemic” of abortion disinformation out there right now—coming to you weekly. Watch here:  AND:
 ZAKIA AND HER TRAINER CELEBRATING THEIR BRONZE MEDAL WIN. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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