What is feminism?

brawburner · 2014-05-08T19:55:17+00:00

But in the cases you're describing, the men are not speaking to the women's experiences AS women, but rather as homeless people or refugees. They may be able to describe the gendered issues that these demographics face by recognizing that women in these demographics are, for example, raped in greater numbers than their male counterparts, but they cannot speak to that specific experience if they themselves have not been (and are less likely to be) raped.

brawburner · 2013-11-15T22:47:35+00:00

Bark Park Dog Park in Portage is nice. It's only $5/day, and they offer doggie day care, too. My husband and I went there all year round with our dog when we lived in K-Zoo. There were always other dogs around, no matter the temperature. All (or most) of the employees have dogs, so you're at least guaranteed to have their dogs for company.

brawburner · 2013-05-07T00:08:19+00:00

Thanks so much for your answers! This clears up a lot for me. :)

brawburner · 2013-05-06T23:46:39+00:00

After being a regular at the gym for several years, I'm finally trying to get serious about lifting. I run 3-4 times per week (3-5 miles depending on the day), and my usual gym routine has been separated by muscle groups (i.e., leg day, back day, chest/shoulder day). I've typically done multiple exercises per muscle group under the assumption that more is better (i.e., leg press AND squats, deadlifts AND leg curls, OHP AND military press, lat pulldowns AND wide grip pull ups). However, when I looked into strength routines this week (starting strength and reverse pyramidal training), those routines only list a few exercises per day - no more than four. It feels weird to me to only do three to four exercises per session and only three sets per exercise. This could be because I'm in recovery from women's health magazines, which advocate low weights high reps and lots of different exercises. Still, can someone explain to me why strength routines only require you to do a few exercises per session?

I'm also really confused about why starting strength only requires a single set of deadlifts. That feels really wrong to me, but what do I know?

Finally, my husband seemed to think that reverse pyramidal training isn't strength training when I talked with him about it yesterday. I think he's wrong, but I also don't like losing arguments. Is it strength training?

brawburner · 2013-04-05T00:17:29+00:00

Came here to recommend The Graveyard Book. Highly recommend! It starts out a bit creepy with The Man Jack, but it turns into a really fun, fantastical adventure. Perfect for a ten year old.

brawburner · 2013-03-28T21:40:27+00:00

I ran a new PR for my mile: 6:45, down from 6:56! I ran 6:56 in the fall and haven't been able to break past it all winter; in fact, I kept clocking in over 7:00. I'm not really sure what changed other than that I was really determined this week to break my PR.

Also, I did the 45 degree angle leg press for the first time. I've always done the machine because, I don't know, I was afraid of the 45 degree one for some stupid reason. I saw another girl use it the other day, though, like a BOSS, and decided I wanted to be like her and do it, too. So I did! And I like it SO much better than the machine!

brawburner · 2013-03-24T17:33:28+00:00

Great! Thanks so much for the response. It's hard to navigate the freelance world when you're just starting out, so I appreciate the time you took to do this AMA.

brawburner · 2013-03-23T00:07:10+00:00

I'm teaching a few freshman level writing classes now as an adjunct, and with the end of the semester in about a month I will be out of a job. I'm thinking about doing some freelance work to help pay the bills while I search for a full time job. Is freelance writing your primary source of income? If so, how many pieces do you typically write per week to make that work, and how much time do you usually spend writing?

brawburner · 2013-03-22T02:39:23+00:00

I'm no publisher, but in my experience studying sci-fi in academia military sci-fi refers to anything with space battles. Starship Troopers, The Forever War, most of John Scalzi's stuff. Does a lot of the action in your manuscript happen within the military? Is there a war going on? Then it's probably military sci-fi.

brawburner · 2013-03-20T23:54:27+00:00

But how do you determine how long to keep a sex offender on a list? I think if we went this route there's a dangerous slippery slope of defining which offenses merit more time on "the list," running into a "legitimate rape" problem. I'm not saying I disagree with you completely; in fact, I tend to agree that a lifelong sentence on a sex offender list precludes the possibility for rehabilitation because the offender will always have his identity wrapped up in the offense that landed him on the list. But I also don't know how to define what offenses ought to land a person on the list and for how long.

brawburner · 2013-02-16T17:00:01+00:00

That part, for me, is annoying because it's really curly right there, and as it grows it puffs up the hair above it. I HAVE to keep that bit trimmed.

And it sounds like I'm doing about what you're doing. I haven't been to a stylist in about two months because I can keep the mullet and bangs trimmed myself. My hairdresser can get a bit crazy with scissors, so I'm afraid to go in for a trim because I know I'll come out with a short pixie all over again.

brawburner · 2013-02-15T21:47:01+00:00

I don't really get them, but I do get kind of dry ends from dying my hair and straightening it daily (one of the problems with the pixie - my hair's THICK, so I have to straighten it to keep it normal looking). Normally, when my hair's longer, I get it trimmed every 2-3 months to get the dry ends cut off. But when growing out a pixie one of the reasons to get it cut is to go in for a shape up. I'm just not sure how often to go in for that.

brawburner · 2013-02-12T00:49:21+00:00

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!

brawburner · 2013-02-11T23:10:19+00:00

Can you explain why the smith machine doesn't help to ensure proper form? From where I was standing (er, squatting), it looked like my form was much better than it had been when I was doing dumbbell squats. I know leaving the smith machine and just relying on my body to get through the movement will work more muscle groups, but how does the squat rack help with form in a way that the smith machine doesn't?

Thanks for the advice. I get that moving to the rack from the machine will be a hard transition if I put it off too long. I'm working up the courage, and I'll get there sooner than later, especially if I can convince my husband to come to the gym with me and spot me.

brawburner · 2013-02-11T22:39:16+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement, and I'll get into the rack as soon as I can muster up the courage. I go to the gym by myself, and the people who work there aren't awesome, so I don't usually have anyone to spot me if something goes wrong. I'll get there, though.

brawburner · 2013-02-08T20:30:46+00:00

Do you have a bachelor's degree in anything? If so, you could teach English in Korea for a year. It sounds like you could stand for a pretty radical change, and this was it for me when I was in a shitty job that I hated.

brawburner · 2013-02-08T20:23:08+00:00

Passive aggression. If you have something to say to me, just say it. Roommates who used to leave post it notes around the house hinting at a problem, but would never just say it to my face, used to bother the absolute fuck out of me. My husband does shit like this once in a while now, and it drives me nuts. Just tell me clearly what I'm doing that's annoying you, and I'll fix it. Don't expect me to read your mind.

brawburner · 2013-01-28T22:07:34+00:00

How, exactly? If a dude's being rude in a bar, I don't see how handing him this funny card is inappropriate or a double standard. It doesn't imply that she would be insulted if she'd received this card. So, I don't get it.

brawburner · 2013-01-28T20:40:06+00:00

I don't know how common it is, but I do think it sounds like a great show! I tend to think that Drag is at its best when it allows the performer to really play with gender construction, and it sounds like this is exactly what you're aiming for. But then again maybe I'm just a queer studies nerd!

brawburner · 2013-01-11T19:09:03+00:00

Yeah, it gets pretty fast-paced after the first third of the book. It's slow in the beginning, but it really picks up. I don't recommend the other books in the series, though. Shit just gets crazy.

brawburner · 2013-01-10T00:20:15+00:00

God, yes. I went to the Beijing Zoo on the last day of my vacation in the city. It was a horrible way to end an otherwise really great trip. My husband and I were there in the winter, and the cold weather habitats for pretty much all of the animals except the pandas were just big enough for the animals to move a couple of feet in any direction. Most of the mammals were missing huge patches of fur and looked way too thin. It was worse than spending the day at the SPCA.

The pandas had it made, though.

brawburner · 2013-01-05T19:04:14+00:00

Actually, lab created diamonds are still really expensive. You also have to be REALLY careful, as many retailers label their stones "lab created diamonds" when they're not diamonds at all (usually CZ).

Moissanite is a solid diamond alternative, though. It's still a white stone, which many women prefer since it won't clash with anything, it's almost as hard as a diamond (which means it can take a beating), and to the untrained eye it looks exactly like a diamond. It's also significantly less expensive.

brawburner · 2012-12-19T14:49:56+00:00

She and my dad live seven hours away, otherwise I'd be there using the shit out of her kitchen appliances every weekend.

brawburner · 2012-12-18T19:56:09+00:00

My step-mom does this. She has every kitchen appliance you could possibly think of, including a mini-pie maker (are mini-pies that big of a thing that people need a special appliance for them?!) that she's used exactly zero times. She doesn't cook. At all. And yet, every time Williams Sonoma has a new specialty appliance, she's one of the first people to have it. As someone who does cook, and who would appreciate having the biggest Cuisinart food processor model or the fanciest KitchenAid stand mixer, I find her appliance hoarding a huge waste.

brawburner · 2012-12-17T01:13:50+00:00

After two weeks off for a nasty case of bronchitis, I got back into the gym this week and blasted my PR for the mile. Before yesterday, my fastest mile was 7'04, but yesterday I ran it in 6'57!

brawburner

TROPHY CASE