27 February 2020: Grading midterm essays all day and find myself struck by this insightful and funny (and kind of butch) line from one of my GWST/HNRS seminar students: "The withholding of laughter is a prominent feature in the feminist tool-belt."
I've been thinking a lot about this lately--how easily we laugh at what disturbs or offends us, or perhaps even more problematically, how women laugh when men say unacceptable things. My favorite (and by that I mean least favorite) manifestation is when men (and not all men...duh) make jokes about why they haven't done something they were supposed to do, why they did something they weren't supposed to do, or why they messed up, as if their charming "oh shucks" moves absolve them. And I love (and by that I mean love) the move of just looking back at them without smiling or laughing. Such a flex.
So yeah...totally featuring that tool on my feminist tool-belt.
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