Celebrate women on International Women’s Day
Today is supposed to celebrate women around the world… And it’s a tough time to be a woman but hopefully we can make it a better world for our daughters… I have a dream of a world where women don’t have to work twice as hard for equal pay, where paternity leave is as common as maternity leave, and where women are celebrated for the fact that they give life and aren’t told that math and science are too hard to worry their pretty little heads about. A world where people look back in amazement that in 2018 1 in 6 women have survived an attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes… And to honor all that I hope you watch one of my idols and a person who inspires me…
If you don’t have the time to hear it live maybe the transcript will speak to you
I am a nasty woman.
I’m not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust. A man whose words are a distract to America; Electoral College-sanctioned hate speech contaminating this national anthem.
I am not as nasty as Confederate flags being tattooed across my city. Maybe the South actually is gonna rise again; maybe for some it never really fell. Blacks are still in shackles and graves just for being Black. Slavery has been re-interpreted as the prison system in front of people who see melanin as animal skin.
I am not as nasty as a swastika painted on a pride flag. And I didn’t know devils could be resurrected, but I feel Hitler in these streets—a mustache traded for a toupee; Nazis re-named the cabinet; electro-conversion therapy the new gas chambers, shaming the gay out of America turning rainbows into suicide notes.
I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege.
I’m not as nasty as using little girls like Pokémon before their bodies have even developed.
I am not as nasty as your own daughter being your favorite sex symbol—like your wet dreams infused with your own genes.
But yah, I am a nasty woman?!
A loud vulgar, proud woman.
I’m not nasty like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booth.
I’m nasty like the battles my grandmothers fought to get me into that voting booth.
I’m nasty like the fight for wage equality. Scarlett Johansson: Why were the famous actors paid less than half of what the male actors earned last year?
See, even when we do go into higher paying jobs our wages are still cut with blades, sharpened by testosterone. Why is the work of a Black woman and a Hispanic woman worth only 63 and 54 cents of a white man’s privileged daughter?
This is not a feminist myth. This is inequality.
So we are not here to be debunked. We are here to be respected. We are here to be nasty.
I am nasty like the blood stains on my bed sheets. We don’t actually choose if and when to have our periods. Believe me, if we could, some of us would. We don’t like throwing away our favorite pairs of underpants. Tell me, why are tampons and pads still taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not? Is your erection really more than protecting the sacred messy part of my womanhood? Is the blood stain on my jeans more embarrassing than the thinning of your hair?
I know it is hard to look at your own entitlement and privilege. You may be afraid of the truth. I am unafraid to be honest. It may sound petty bringing up a few extra cents. It adds up to the pile of change I have yet to see in my country.
I can’t see. My eyes are too busy praying to my feet hoping you don’t mistake eye contact for wanting physical contact. Half my life I have been zipping up my smile hoping you don’t think I wanna unzip your jeans.
I am unafraid to be nasty because I am nasty like Susan, Elizabeth, Eleanor, Amelia, Rosa, Gloria, Condoleezza, Sonia, Malala, Michelle, Hillary.
And our pussies ain’t for grabbin’. Therefore, reminding you that are balls are stronger than America’s ever will be. Our pussies are for our pleasure. They are for birthing new generations of filthy, vulgar, nasty, proud, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sheikh—you name it—for new generations of nasty women. So if you [are] a nasty woman or love one who is, let me hear you say, “HELL YEAH!”
I am a survivor in many ways. I’m a survivor of rape and the fact that just typing those words made me pause and wonder how my friends will take that admission and feel even the slightest bit of shame, tells me how far we have yet to go…
Please help me make a world where women are celebrated… And one(ok it’s really two) last thing to inspire you… Have you heard Patrick Stewart speak on violence against women? I was a trekkie (always gonna love me some star trek the next generation) but I fell in love with the person behind my favorite captain when I heard his response at comicon take the time to watch these speeches… It is time well spent
a Quote along with some Other Things
“She’d called him a coward, running away whenever she pulled him toward something he didn’t like. It was not so much cowardice as ego, and not even so much protecting his ego as safeguarding the supports that kept it intact. Success bolstered his ego. Doing what he was good at and avoiding failure in every possible way. He’d first realized that in high school, when he’d dropped out of geometry, not because he disliked it but because he wasn’t good at it. Algebra came easily. Calculus was also fine. But there was something about geometry that he could not wrap his mind around. So he dropped the course. The moment he discovered he did not have the knack for something, he stopped trying to do it. Empathy, friendship, dating, relationships in general. He embraced a challenge only if he knew he could succeed. The hard truth of the matter was that Gabriel was spoiled. He got what he wanted, and did not want what he could not get. “ Kelley Armstrong Rituals
I am thoroughly enjoying my quest through Cainsville this time around. It never ceases to amaze me that every time I read one of my favorite authors my mind finds little parts of the story to delight over. The plot of each novel, for the most part remains the plot. There are a few slight deviations from that rule where knowing the plot in its entirety changes the substance of the story. This happens with Christine Feehan’s Carpathian series, when the overarching hatred between mages and the Carpathians leads to the discovery that their lack of fertility comes from an evil wizard’s working of a spell. It definitely happens in Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series. I think it is beginning to happen in the Anita Blake Series as we see more challenging foes as well as more powerful allies.
Sometimes, I find myself amazed though how much knowing one of the larger series in paranormal romance leads to the calm acceptance (to some extent) of fantastical creatures from myth and lore. One of the things I have greatly enjoyed in the Cainsville series is the interweaving of some pretty obscure Celtic imagery, characters and lore. Would the imagery of the Wild Hunt as a biker gang be so easily accepted had it not sort of appeared that way in the Dresden files? And now, Kelley Armstrong has introduced the slaugh which plays a large role in Laurell K Hamilton’s Meredith gentry Series. This Slaugh is a very different incarnation from the one in Merry Gentry’s world, but the idea itself is more easily accepted since it plays such a large role in Merry’s world.
I guess that the point of this general ramble is that everything is connected and , no I am not going into deep philosophical questions of identity or politics. I am just remarking upon the fact that so many have before–everything is possible and yet nothing can ever truly be new. And now I go back to Cainsville a little bit sad because I know the end is near but a little bit happy to as I never know quite what to expect until a story actually reaches its end.
Fiction
Random House Canada
August 15, 2017
496
The fifth book and the exciting conclusion to bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's "impossible-to-put-down" Cainsville series, in which she mixes hard-hitting crime writing with phenomenal world-building to create a brand of fiction all her own. When Olivia Taylor-Jones found out she was not actually the adopted child of a privileged Chicago family but of a notorious pair of convicted serial killers, her life exploded. Running from the fall-out, she found a refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois, but she couldn't resist trying to dig out the truth about her birth parents' crimes. She began working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer who also had links to the town; their investigation soon revealed Celtic mysteries at work in Cainsville, and also entangled Olivia in a tense love triangle with the calculating Gabriel and her charming biker boyfriend, Ricky. Worse, troubling visions revealed to Olivia that the three of them were reenacting an ancient drama pitting the elders of Cainsville against the mysterious Huntsmen with Olivia as the prize. In the series' fifth and final novel, not only does Gabriel's drug addict mother, who he thought was dead, make a surprise reappearance, but Kelley Armstrong delivers a final scary and surprising knock-out twist. It turns out a third supernatural force has been at work all along, a dark and malevolent entity that has had its eye on Olivia since she was a baby and wants to win at any cost.
Kelley Armstrong Cainsville Order
The Screams of Dragons (Subterranean Press magazine, narrator: non-series character)
Devil May Care (in “Led Astray,” narrator: Patrick)
Cainsville Files (app-based story, narrator: non-series character)
Gabriel’s Gargoyles (in “Gifted,” narrator: Gabriel)
Bad Publicity (in Cainsville Tales, narrator: Patrick)
The Orange Cat (coming spring 2015, in “nEvermore” narrator: Gabriel)
Omens (novel, narrator: Olivia)
Visions (novel, narrator: Olivia)
Deceptions (novel, narrator: Olivia)
Lady of the Lake (Cainsville Tales, narrators: Olivia and Ricky)
Lost Souls (coming early 2017, novella, narrators: Gabriel & Patrick)
Betrayals (novel, narrator: Olivia)
Rituals (coming August 2017, narrator: Olivia)
[Top]What I am Reading Now…
So, given the release of Rituals yesterday, I am rereading the Cainsville series. I am thoroughly enjoying spending time reconnecting with Olivia, Gabriel and Ricky…and to be quite honest I am not sure who I am rooting for in this triangle. I love Olivia and Ricky as a couple, but Gabriel needs her so badly…
He is so broken and yet so fixable…
Sigh…I guess I will have to read through the end of Rituals to find out how it all works out!
But, Oh my–I am quite enthralled in the story which reminds me how much I love Kelley Armstrong!
This series starts as contemporary fiction and yet there is so much more to the story and Kelley Armstrong seems a little bit incapable of writing without some sort of paranormal twist in there…