Category Archives: Uncategorized

What the?

Yes, you may have noticed Talkin’ Reckless looks a little different. People who have followed me for a while should be familiar with my “design-restlessness.” In other words, I like to change things up from time to time. And yes, there are more changes still to come.  Thanks for hangin’ in there while I fiddle around.

New Obesity Prevention Campaign Rife with Fat-Shaming

This piece was up on Sociological Images yesterday!

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) sponsored two new billboards in Albany, NY, warning residents that cheese makes you fat in what is possibly most irresponsible way ever. The first features an obese man’s disembodied torso and the words, “Your abs on cheese.” The second features an obese woman’s butt and thighs and the words, “Your thighs on cheese.” The images make a very clear statement: fat people are disgusting. Read more.

What do you do with a problem like Nazi internet trolls?

Last week, Talkin’ Reckless was the subject of a blog post on a Neo-Nazi website. Ever since then, I’ve been getting a lot of shockingly graphic, anti-semitic, hatemail. I’m talking “Elders of Zion”-type shit. To be honest, I was taken aback. I can’t say I’ve ever had that kind of Nazi-speak directed at me, personally, before. I’ve grown up not completely sheltered from anti-semitism, but luckily it was rare. Much more common was just ignorance, like the kind revealed in the “Shit Christians Say to Jews” video. But there’s a big difference between ignorant comments and hateful comments. And boy howdy, was I getting some hate.

Now, I know as much as the next person how important it is not to feed the trolls. And these Nazi commenters are trolls of the worst order — the angry, threatening kind. I tried to ignore the whole thing. But everyday, new anti-semitic threats and slurs kept showing up in my inbox.

Two of my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. They lived in the Lodz ghetto in Poland and were both sent to Auschwitz, although they didn’t meet each other until after the war. I always felt that they, and my dad (their son), were paranoid about anti-semitism. I mean, the paranoia was pretty damn rational for them, but it never felt like a real threat to me. Then again, I had never received emails from people saying they’d like to put me in an oven before.

I’ve taken a few days to think about it — whether I should respond, and if so, what I should say. I figured out what I wanted to say long before I decided whether I should say anything at all. I made a video. And then I agonized about whether or not to share it.

“You’re just going to bait them and get worse hatemail,” said a friend. “Why are you taunting them?” It’s true. I probably will get more hatemail. But is this just feeding the trolls, or is this a chance to say something important? To call attention to the reality that old-school anti-semitism still lives (even if it is in a small and pathetic sort of way).

In the end I thought about my grandparents. How would they feel if they knew their granddaughter was getting this sort of hatemail? They loved to say things like “I didn’t survive the Holocaust so you could drop out of high school and become a janitor.” Or maybe it was my dad who loved to say that… (“Your grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust so you could get a tattoo!)

Well here’s what I have to say: My grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust so that I should stand silently and be bullied by racist idiots.

It may not be the most mature way to handle internet trolls, but at least I live in a world where I’m free to express myself, free to be Jewish, and free to delete emails without reading them.

So, without further ado, this is what I have to say:

Why I’m the angry girl who yells at Drunk Creepers™

Saturday night I went out with my cousin and her friends, whom I like very much, to celebrate her birthday. We went to a big, loud, Boston bar — one of those super popular spots that’s big enough to house both sports and dancing. We were up close to the cover band (playing everything from Greenday to Eminem to Foster the People) and I couldn’t help but notice the Drunk Creeper™ who kept touching women without their consent.

You know the type I’m talking about. The Drunk Creeper™ is a dude who is very drunk and very handsy. His patented move is to come up behind a girl and slide his arm around her waist, so that he can — before she even knows what’s happening — touch her hips and whisper in her ear in that oh-so-intimate of sexual positions. I find it hard to ignore Drunk Creepers™; they set off my internal alarm bells, even from across a dark bar. After watching a Drunk Creeper™ approach-and-grope seven or more women in quick succession, you know it’s only a matter of time before he stumbles onto you.

There’s a standard way to deal with a Drunk Creeper™ that fits with the learned, ladylike rule to always be pleasing, even in refusal. When a Drunk Creeper™ slimes his way onto your body, you start by giving the forced smile/eye roll combo that lets your friends know you are fully aware that this dude is a skeeze, but still appears pleasing to his drunkenly impaired senses. Then you sortof pretend to listen to his inebriated acknowledgment of your hotness and politely decline his advances, slowly disengaging yourself from his grip and moving to a new spot. Then, afterwards, you discuss what a creeper he was with your friends. It’s girl tested, girl approved.

Youtube celeb Jenna Mourey, aka Jenna Marbles, has a different approach: the face.

If that doesn’t work, she has more goofy techniques like acting like a velociraptor, singing, or planking until the guy leaves you alone. These are hilarious in theory, and they may even work in practice, but they still bother me. Basically, the Jenna Marbles’ techniques give you a humorous way to end an interaction without having to be the angry bitch girl who raised her voice and caused a scene on the dance floor. Because, according to the rules of being a lady, you must never, ever, be the angry bitch girl.

Saturday night, I was an angry bitch girl.

The Drunk Creeper™ was dancing in front of me and dropped his jacket on my feet. I kicked it back towards him, which unfortunately caught his attention. He spun around and before he even had time to look at me, grabbed my face with both hands and started to come in for a drunken, slobbery kiss. I reacted with a kung fu parry (all girls should take martial arts) and yelled “Don’t fucking touch me!” He backed off, but everyone around me gave me startled looks.

A little while later, I noticed him dancing behind a friend of mine. I leaned in to tell her to watch out for him because he was a Drunk Creeper™. Just as I finished warning her, he came up behind her and slid his arm across her waist and stuck his face in the crook of her neck. Before she had a chance to react, I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him off her. I screamed at him to get the fuck out of here and pointed forcefully with my finger. He looked terrified. But then again, so did everyone in a five-foot radius.

It’s never cool to be the angry girl, which is why Jenna Marbles came up with a creative way to take control without having to get angry. But sometimes I think it’s important to be the angry girl. Like, for example, when you’re really angry at a Drunk Creeper™ who is treating women’s bodies like his own property, touching without asking, and who will undoubtedly wake up the next morning with a hangover, but absolutely no qualms about his sexist, predatory behavior. Even though I admire the humor of the approach, I think it’s demeaning to use the “face” to deal with Drunk Creepers™. Why must we be so cautious about expressing genuine anger or disgust in situations like this when it’s so clearly warranted?

Maybe I’m just the angry feminist who can’t laugh it off as “boys will be boys.” But maybe, just maybe, I’m acting the way a person should act when their personal space and potential safety is violated by a drunk asshole.

The predatory behavior of Drunk Creepers™ doesn’t deserve a free pass, and I refuse to be ashamed of being the angry bitch who won’t give it to them.

Amy Poehler shares lessons learned through improv with Harvard grads

As a person who commutes to work directly through Harvard Square, I had nothing positive to say about Harvard Commencement this week. Until I saw Amy Poehler talk about her improv training and the life lessons she learned from it in her commencement address to the Harvard Class of 2011.

  1. Listen
  2. Say yes
  3. Live in the moment
  4. Play with people who have your back
  5. Make big choices early and often
  6. Don’t start a scene where 2 people talk about jumping out of a plane. Start the scene already having jumped.
  7. If you’re scared, look into your partner’s eyes. You’ll feel better.

In 2003 I joined a fledgling improv group with 5 dudes. We were clueless, but committed. Soon enough, we learned to listen, to say yes, and sometimes we even made #5 and #6 happen. And we always had each other’s backs. By 2007, our group had grown to 13 and we weren’t terrible anymore. In fact, we were pretty damn good. And then we graduated.

Amy said:

As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.

You can’t do this alone. Besides, it’s much more fun to succeed and fail with other people. You can blame them when things go wrong.

I have to say, it feels good to know that I have, for the most part, followed Amy’s advice since graduating college. (Especially since I was hungover and fell asleep at my own commencement in 2007 and missed all the worldly advice our speaker Tom Friedman had to give.)

I started college a 17 year-old late bloomer, homesick, and stuck with a crazy Russian roommate who blasted “Hey Mickey” to wake herself up for class at 7:30 am. If it wasn’t for improv, I’m not sure I would have made it through that first rough semester. And without them, college would not have been nearly as much fun.

I still do spend a lot of time with my improv family, even if we have spread out across the country. We share our lives, our successes and failures, not to mention a thread of meaningless emails about poop and/or comic book characters every single day.  Since 2007, new people have joined and enriched our group as well. And today, I am about as lucky as a girl can get to have such a tight crew of people in my life.

So, four years after my own graduation, I’m still somewhat unsure of what I’m doing or where I’m going in life. I’ve taken some risks and I know I should probably take some more. Life after college is scary and complicated, but I feel better knowing that 1) I’ve taken away some life skills from my crazy improv days and 2) I have awesome friends.

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Talkin’ Reckless

Looking for Not a Dirty Word? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.

As you already figured out, Not a Dirty Word has been reinvented as Talkin’ Reckless. Here’s the deal: I’ve been thinking an awful lot about my professional/public web presence. As an online communications professional and so-called social media “specialist,” it’s important to have a curated online footprint that represents the image I would like the public, including potential employers and colleagues, to see.  I want a blog to be part of that footprint, but I wasn’t sure that Not a Dirty Word fit the bill as it was. It was a little too political, a little too “in your face,” to represent my public image.

The second reason I made the change is that I wanted the blog title to be about more than just gender and sex. Feminism, women’s health, reproductive rights, sex education, and health communication are still my primary topics of interest. However, a slightly more vague title gives me the freedom to talk about a wider variety of topics. So, for instance, if I want to talk about Jewish issues, labor issues, animal rights issues, etc., it wont feel out of place.

I discussed this idea in a thread on Facebook. John, a good friend and faithful reader, wrote:

I’ll be sad to see Not A Dirty Word go. Taking it down to be more public-image-friendly seems to kill the thing that made it special, and to be admitting that they are dirty words. If they weren’t, would you still be inclined to change the title?

Here’s my response.

First of all, I’m not taking the site down. It’s still here, and all the old content is still here. I’m also going to continue blogging about feminist issues, sexual health issues, and other controversial topics. The main difference is that the site title and layout (bye-bye Not a Dirty Word banner) wont be so BAM! IN YO FACE!, and I might blog about other topics too.

I don’t think that by changing the title I am admitting that things like “sex” or “abortion” are dirty words. They’re not. I’m still going to use them – a lot.  I suppose it’s the classic dilemma: do you choose to work within the system, or fight the system? By changing the name to something less IN YO FACE!, I am making a choice to work more within the system. For two reasons:

  1. I worried that the former layout and its emphasis on these emotionally triggering words was actually turning people away. One or two people told me that they didn’t feel they could read Not a Dirty Word at work because the banner was a bit too attention-grabbing in the wrong way. I could also see people who weren’t totally comfortable with those words being disinclined to read the blog. Hopefully, with a more vague but still totally awesome blog name, I will eliminate that barrier and gain some new readers.
  2. The second reason is about pragmatism and caution. The reality is that I am not a famous or successful blogger, nor am I independently wealthy, and I still rely on people hiring me in order to live. If I want to give myself the best shot at a career, it’s probably not the best strategy to have a public blog with all those words at the top, no matter how NOT DIRTY they are.

I hope my reasoning has made sense an that you will stick with me and this blog even if you don’t support my decision. As much as I am sad to see “Not a Dirty Word” go, I’m really excited about the new name. As my friend Aimee said, “Talkin’ Reckless” has a “renegade, badass feel.” I couldn’t agree more. In early 2009, I was teaching in an alternative high school program for at-risk youth. After telling my journalism class that I expected them to try writing a blog post, one student responded, “Ms. B, you talkin’ reckless.” He was right. I do talk reckless, and that isn’t going to stop.  I’m just going to do it a little more carefully.

When is it ok to make a rape joke?

The whole Penny Arcade “dickwolves” thing has got me thinking about rape jokes.  One camp says that rape jokes are never funny, and others believe there is maybe some wiggle room depending on context.  I see the value in humor that is edgy or even offensive.  That’s why I don’t think I can belong to the first camp.  Still, there should be some guidelines for understanding how and when rape jokes should be used and some sort of criteria to help comedians decide whether a rape joke is a “good” one or a really terrible one.

That led to this flowchart.  I made it quickly, so it’s far from a finished product.  Love to know what you guys think.