#423: Things I Didn’t Know About
3 great articles that widened my perspective and grew my empathy
Hi there, loyal readers, and welcome, new subscribers. Thank you for being here.
We’re coming up on the ninth year of this newsletter. It’s an honor, week after week, to put in front of you what I think are the best articles on race, education, and culture. Along the way, I get to learn a ton. Even if the topic of an article is something I know a little bit about — let’s say teaching — I go in curious and find a morsel of newness. But sometimes, like this week, I’m blown away with how little I know. Doing this newsletter puts me in contact with new experiences and new perspectives that grow my empathy. I hope this week’s articles might do the same for you. They’re about:
women’s land communities and lesbian separatist collectives in Oregon
what it feels like to give birth at age 45
a kissing game in 1958 in Monroe, North Carolina
Depending on your interest and time, I’d love it if you read one (or three) of these pieces and then shared your thoughts about them in the comments. Please enjoy!
Coming up at Article Club
💬 Let’s chat: Hello Article Club! Melinda here! Our new Substack Chat feature is well underway, but it isn’t too late to join the party! In this Substack Chat, fellow Article Clubbers are discussing the new personal essay series by writer and podcaster, Ann Friedman, where she’s sharing with us her unexpected journey from child-free person to new parent. Ann will be publishing a new essay each Friday for a total of 10 weeks, and the fourth in the series comes out tomorrow! On Monday, December 11th at Noon Eastern, I’ll pop into the chat to get the discussion going! Whether you’re completely new to Article Club and you’re curious to see what the community is like, or you’re a long-time Article Clubber looking to connect with the community more consistently while reading shorter essays — this Substack chat party is for you! You can check out more details here, listen to my mini-podcast episode, and see next steps to join! Hope to see you in the chat!
1️⃣ Women’s Land
In southern Oregon, in between Grants Pass and Roseburg, there’s a 100-mile stretch where in the 1970s, groups of lesbian women, who called themselves landdykes, built intentional communities in order to fight against the heterosexism of second-wave feminism and to live free from the male gaze.
In this well-written article, Bethany Kaylor travels to Fly Away Home during the fall Equinox to spend time with the women who live there. They’re mostly in their 70s and 80s now. They explain how they came to the land, how liberating it was, how they shed their birth names and governed by consensus.
But they also acknowledge that lesbian collectives are no longer as popular as they used to be. Younger women find them too white. There’s no wi-fi. There’s concern that the lands promote a sense of manifest destiny. Worst of all is a charge that the communities are transphobic.
But there’s something that keeps Ms. Kaylor going back, that makes her friends ask her why she’s obsessed with these lands. There are many reasons, she writes:
Time is different on women’s land. Decades stretch and fold into each other: the trees grow higher, the women older, their gardens wilder. Years are measured by lovers and breakups, the bounty of harvests, the slow construction of yurts and cabins, children and grandchildren.
By Bethany Kaylor • Sunday Long Read • 21 min
2️⃣ I Gave Birth at 45
“Giving birth at 45 is rolling the dice,” writes Grace Glassman in this fast-paced, frightening first-person account of her birth. After all, Dr. Glassman makes sure to mention, if you’re a woman, and you’re 35 years or older, you’ve reached “advanced maternal age,” with a much higher chance of dying during childbirth. It doesn’t help that the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries.
What begins as a routine C-section slowly changes after Dr. Glassman’s nurse notices the bleeding. Then comes a blood pressure reading of 63/17. Then come the blood transfusions, then pressors, then disseminated intravascular coagulation, then finally hemorrhagic shock.
“In medicine,” Dr. Glassman writes, “it can be hard to recognize the instant when a patient has crossed the line from stable to unstable, or from unstable to gracing death’s door, because there are no clear lines.”
By Grace Glassman • Slate • 20 mins
3️⃣ The Kiss
One afternoon in October 1958 in Monroe, North Carolina, three children were playing a kissing game. One was Sissy Sutton, a 7-year-old white girl. The other two were James Hanover Thompson, a 9-year-old Black boy; and his friend David Fuzzy Simpson, an 8-year-old Black boy. Sissy kissed David on the cheek. Then she kissed James. Then the children headed home.
You may not want to read what happened next. Certainly the point of Article Club is not to (re)traumatize you. But this is an important story I didn’t know about, despite my college history degree and my many years of teaching U.S. History. Given that we have states banning the teaching of full and truthful representations of our nation’s past, I do recommend this piece, especially to social studies teachers.
By Sara Rimer • Equal Justice Initiative • 9 mins
Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀
To our 9 new subscribers — including Mercedes, Anne, Zack, Liv, Maggie, Vinson, and Ly — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Marcia! Marsha! Marshall!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Norah, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.
If you like Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:
❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Anne (thank you). If you’ve subscribed for free for some time, and you appreciate the articles and interviews, or if you’ve joined one or more discussions, I encourage you to take the leap. You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes from time to time. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.
📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.
On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.
As for The Kissing Game--or, no. Sorry. Too close to my own family’s never-ending reality for comment. If I could even make the attempt, there would only be an endless stream of curse words and a babble of choke-filled, snot-nosed tears. I’m the only white person in my family; had it been otherwise, I’d have surely gone crazy or killed somebody long before now.
A land for women--at first glance, what a wonderful concept! (I’d have appreciated this article better had the author refrained from SO many references to “dykes” and “butches.” I prefer less highly charged descriptions.) When I played rugby, I was one of two women on my team who weren’t gay. It was profoundly disheartening for me to see how very often the dominant/submissive roles were played exactly as they are in male/female relationships; not a single gay relationship in this group had managed to steer clear of it. With Black women, I think such groups don’t give enough attention to men and children (who do need men, especially since almost half will BE men, but even girls need to at least be familiar with the other side--and good grief, but men surely do NEED US). On the other hand, the notion of getting away from men is very appealing, having been ruled/threatened/harassed by patriarchy all my life and throughout my 33-year marriage. Would I be truly happy in a land disconnected from the larger world and devoid of men? Despite the patriarchy, I sincerely hope not.