Therapy meets academia: Just texted a friend “You are not your academic parents” while talking about how our generation of millennial PhDs are trying to educate & treat our grad students more ethically than what we experienced. You know, with less oppression & abuses of power. 🤷🏾♀️
Note: I had AMAZING mentors personally but not every tenured faculty member I interacted with was great & I’ve heard so many horror stories from peers.
Speaking of treating grad students better...
My advisor took ME out to a fancy meal after my defense. I did write thank you notes and provide small gifts to my committee, but I did not feel an expectation to provide anything but gratitude.
When I was in high school I intentionally did not apply for scholarships intended to support students of color or students from low income backgrounds. I was determined to show I could do it on merit alone.
So it’s ironic now that no matter how many degrees or awards or books, certain folks will say I’m “just” a “DEI hire” & don’t deserve my job when they don’t know anything about how or why I was hired. All they see is a fat Black queer woman & they immediately think “unqualified”
If I had known this is the way it would be for my entire academic career, from when I started college to now about to be a full professor, I would’ve taken more scholarships, more support, more resources every chance I had. There’s no winning with ppl who don’t want me to exist.
I think it’s telling that a bunch of conservatives are responding to a video of me twerking on stage with Janelle Monáe & asking why this behavior is allowed by a professor on a college campus/class. There’s a reason I teach critical thinking skills & reading in context.
In case it’s not clear, Twitter is not my classroom or campus. A Janelle Monáe concert is not (sadly) my classroom or campus. I literally post all my teaching outfits. My syllabi are publicly available. If they truly wanted to know what my classes are like, they could find out.
But of course that’s not the point is it? The point is to say “See this fat Black queer disabled person who is, in her personal life, behaving in a way you don’t associate with old white dude college professors? Must be a DEI hire & a sign of the decline of the university right?”
New #ResearchStudy recruitment #thread: Attention pleasure activists & organizers! I’m beginning a new research project to study the practice of #PleasureActivism by interviewing organizers of pleasure spaces for multiply marginalized people.
For the purposes of this study, pleasure spaces are defined as social spaces intended for pleasure, joy, creativity, healing or other positive emotions. These could include but are not limited to dance parties, art shows, hobby or sports clubs, social groups, & kink/sex parties.
Multiply marginalized people are defined as those who have at least 2 marginalized identities in regard to race, class, gender, sexuality, or disability. Please note I am including kinky and/or polyamorous people as sexually marginalized people in this project.
Meant to post this yesterday but in its first month on the market, #BlackDisabilityPolitics sold 1,820 copies while being #OpenAccess! For an academic book this is a huge success. Thank you all for your support & for showing that open access doesn’t mean no/low sales!
You can download and read the #OpenAccess version here:
If you’d like to buy a copy, you can purchase directly from @DukePress using code E22SCHLK for get 30% off the paperback. Or purchase from your favorite independent bookseller.
Remember when I said COVID would be a mass disabling event with the majority of Americans disabled and people were like “Stop using scare tactics! Stop exaggerating!” But here we are. I want us to prepare for disabled futures not fear them.
And when I say mass disabling event, I don’t just mean long COVID. I also mean all the people with psych disabilities, esp PTSD, from the trauma of the pandemic (like front line workers) & everyone who have had medical care denied or delayed in an over-taxes hospital system.
Ummm so this year there are Reese’s trees and ornaments and bells and nutcrackers and mystery shapes and big snowmen and even bigger Santas. My “Reese’s shapes are better than the cups” people, get into it. We can compare notes.
Ok, first, nutcracker. They’re tiny. Way higher chocolate to peanut bette ratio, firm chocolate texture like the edges of a traditional cup but all over. Not for me.
The ornament was more like an Easter egg, but not flat, fully rounded. Another high chocolate to PB ratio, hard chocolate, thicker than even the edge of a cup normally. Not for me either.