June 2021 Reading List PART 1! (Patreon)

Hellooooo! Welcome to June's reading list (part 1) As always I'm curious to see what you think of some of these things and love to hear your thoughts! We have a special thread for discussing reading list stuff in the discord server if you want to share! 😊

Articles

Welcome to the YOLO Economy - The New York Times published this piece about (mostly) millennials who are burnt out from the pandemic, reassessing their life priorities, have money saved from over a year staying at home, no dependents and just saying fuck it and quitting their jobs. Now lots of people are talking about the YOLO economy and I have very mixed feelings. Are we having a conversation about the privileged trying to find fulfilment and self-actualisation outside of the career ladder or are we having a conversation about mental health, capitalism and work culture??? I think there's an opportunity here to talk about the latter but instead we've somehow created another capitalist ideal to aspire to (be successful enough and make enough money that you're able to YOLO out of your career at 30 and #liveyourbestlife).

Videos

Why the "born this way" argument doesn't advance LGBT equality - after the article I shared in the last reading list about maybe it being okay if bisexuality is a phase someone shared this TED talk (at least that's how I found this TED talk in my memory!) I haven't really seen any one talking about this and maybe because we're somehow stuck and not able to move past the "born this way" argument?? Because of fear of how it might be used by LGBT groups and people? Because of understanding of sexuality is still so limited and we generally have a binary view of the world which is hard for mainstream society to look past???

I Don't Fit in Here - watched this from Sara Dietschy (who I think is great!). I don't resonate with a lot of what she's saying in this video (she's talking about being in the tech, productivity youtubey space but she's completely chaotic and disorganised) but I really resonated with what she said here about the fear/scarcity mindset and that leading to you having less control over your life/schedule:

I still feel like I'm operating from a sense of scarcity, like what does that mean Sara? I hate that feeling so much of being trapped living someone else's life like being an engineer doing xyz I know what that feeling is like and I hate it it's the it's ugh and I feel like for the majority of my adult life that's where I've been operating from from a place where if I don't accept this opportunity I might be back doing something I hate nope gotta say yes to everything gotta do x y z I'm not going back there are you kidding of course yes yes yes yes yes and then you find yourself at a place where the thing that you've craved this entire time control control over your life career how you spend your time well you actually don't have that much control because your schedule is dictating your life, your deals your opportunities are dictating your life.

Breast Q&A with my friend Kayla - a lovely one from Sexplanations about boobies and I feel very seen by her friend with the larger breasts, especially with what she says about how big boobs are sexualised and how the same outfit but on someone with big boobs instead of small boobs will get a very different reception and assumptions.

Do We Regret Having Kids Young? - Iz and Johnny Harris just always killing it with having really open, honest and nuanced conversations about the reality of their relationship and family with getting married and having kids young.

Therapist Breaks Down Couples Fighting in Movies & TV - okay I'm a sucker for these kinds of videos whenever they appear on my home page. Do I learn anything new from them? Who knows.

Unpacking the Male Gaze - love this analysis of Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad vs Birds of Prey and it just cemented for me that yes Birds of Prey is a bloody great film!! Also, I'd be curious if Margot Robbie felt the difference between the two as an actress and what it was like performing the same character in these two very different films.

Should BDSM Be Mainstream? - I kept encountering ideas about this in various videos and then Kat Blaque went and made an entire video about it. I think it's a really important discussion to be having in a post-Fifty Shades of Grey (lol wtf) world. Kink in some circles is seen as cool and desirable and vanilla shaming is a thing we see but also a lot of people internalise in not thinking their sex life is "good" enough because they're not into kinky things. But Kat makes lots of very good points including that the what makes something "kink" is that it is precisely not mainstream!

Podcasts

Alok Vaid-Menon (4D with Demi) - Demi Lovato recently came out as non-binary and they've started a podcast. The first guest was Alok Vaid-Menon and it was a wonderful conversation about gender, expectations, what it means to be non-binary, freedom and healing.

Sex Addiction - I talked about sex addiction in a recent newsletter I think??? Who knows, I'm terrible at keeping track of where I've mentioned things. But this is an older episode from the Meg-John and Justin podcast which is now called Culture, Sex, Relationships. And it's with Dominic Davies, the head of Pink Therapy, and they talk about why sex addiction doesn't exist and what's a better way of framing conversations about potentially problematic sexual behaviours.