lots of talk about raising boys to also participate in household chores, but I think one of the best things we can do for them (and this is gender neutral really!) is teaching them to walk into a room and notice what needs to be done, and then do it without being asked. this looks like your ten old son notices that his hamper is getting full and that he is running low on socks and underwear and taking the initiative to do his own laundry. learning how to work the machines is great, but there's huge power in the noticing and initiative.

a woman posted on TikTok that her husband took her to see a movie on a whim that she knew nothing about. she ended up loving it. she was talking about how much she loved it at dinner. he interrupted her and said, "it was just a movie," and i am begging men to enjoy their wives. she said she fell silent because he had taken the wind out of her sails and like.....do you know how bad and gross of a feeling that is? sorry that I thought you picked a good movie and I wanted to talk to you about it?

this is the last thing I will say about having a kid who has "profound" autism and rfk jr: my daughter changed significantly at 20 months old. she stopped making eye contact, stopped answering to her name, stopped noticing her environment. lost the few words she had. i have videos of the "before times" and i still can't really watch them. i think the last time she spoke was when she finished me singing, "if you're happy and you know it" with a darling "hooray!!!" - that was 5 years ago.

I am not an rfk jr fan but he just described children with what some would call "profound" or "severe" autism at a press conference and i have already seen so much pushback about how "their kid who has autism isn't like that" and like..........congratulations???? mine is. for my daughter, autism is not a super power. it makes her life very difficult. she struggles to communicate her needs, it's hard for her to participate in things with other children.

i am not a conspiracy theorist, i am not anti vax, and "love on the spectrum" is not my life.

she mashed up "how you get the girl" and "clean" and changed the lyrics to tell us "just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss *him*....but now that i'm clean i'm never gonna risk it. and that's how you get clean." she mashed up "cornelia street" (about the apartment where she and joe lived) with "the bolter" to sing,

"i hope i never lose you
hope it never ends
but as she was leaving....it felt like freedom."

tonight will end almost two years of the eras tour and A LOT has happened, let's take a trip down memory lane and hundreds of grainy livestreams 🧵 the eras tour began in march 2023 with a 44 song set list. taylor is dating joe alwyn, as far as we know.

on march 31, in arlington, she removes "invisible string" (written about joe) from the setlist and replaces it with "the 1." no one knew why, yet.

the wildest part about telling people i was getting divorced was the amount of women who immediately replied, "ugh it'll probably be us soon too."

shocked, i would say, "wait, seriously???" and they would be like "yeah the drinking is becoming a lot again, i'm pretty over it." "yeah i never was able to actually get over the 9 month affair. he said he was sorry but i can't look at him the same, i mean, it happened when i had a newborn and a toddler."

girl, get OUT.

mental load is hard to study because it's things like tracking milestones and noticing your toddler should be saying 50 words and they aren't doing that. so then you're calling early intervention and scheduling an eval...and that's a lot more work than washing dishes. it's the constant noticing of what needs to be done, it's tracking the black friday sales in conjunction with what your kids are asking for for christmas, it's researching how to expand the palate of your picky eater and trying over and over again to get him to try a vegetable

as someone whose only dream for my life was to be a wife and mother, i find this sentiment below incredibly dangerous for women. and it's not because i think there's anything wrong with that dream 🧵

https://twitter.com/eddyekofo/status/1845535574926491964

this dream for women is not something can be obtained through any kind of active role- the mode you have to be in is passivity. a constant waiting to be "picked" - which could literally never happen, and by no fault of your own.

🧵 here is the thing about the ballerina farm and the women who end up in similar relationships:

is she oppressed? or is this exactly what she wants?

the answer depends *completely* on the men being good men. because the women (often voluntarily) give up their power. /1 something I don't talk about often is that as someone who grew up in conservative & religious circles, I have seen "traditional relationships" that have been thriving and healthy. and the common denominator was men who saw "leadership" as a call to always put their wives first./2

🧵sometimes i think about how from ages like 24-29 i lost my entire identity bc i got married + became a stepmom + had a baby who wasn't developing typically and it was so bad that i didn't even listen to music that i liked. for five years. all i did was obsess about the roles that i played: wife, mom, stepmom. my life felt scary and out of control and all i did in my "leisure time" was like...listen to podcasts about how to be a better everything. a better wife. a better stepmom. a better mom of a disabled kid.

🧵 pearl is cosplaying as a theologian, but this is actually my area of expertise!

the prodigal son is not about the prodigal son at all. this story is not written for wayward children to read and say, "i can always come back home."

that's not the point. the main character of the story is the elder brother, whose frustration is palpable when his younger brother, who has squandered everything, returns home and is accepted without condition.

and not just accepted, celebrated.

🧵i tweeted this a few months ago and got ✨dragged✨but the real question i was asking is: where do we hear about the pain and inner lives of men?

i asked a male friend this question and he replied, "no one wants to hear about men's inner lives." /1

https://twitter.com/emilykmay/status/1748569104351387762

this response intrigued me and i contemplated it for a long time. do i *want* to know about the inner lives of men?

and then i picked up this book. and holy shit, y'all. /2

a thread of why taylor swift is actually brilliant:

in "the archer" (which is about anxiety) she makes the whole song sound like the beat is about to drop....but it never does.

because that's what anxiety feels like.

https://twitter.com/meghanemurphy/status/1752227722926113127

her song" maroon" is a sequel to "red." the color maroon is deeper and more nuanced than red, like the relationships in your 30s vs your 20s. But maroon is more than just a color, it also means 'to leave someone trapped and alone in an inaccessible place.'

🧵 an under discussed harm of purity culture: when you keep your "end of the deal," but your spouse didn't.

as an evangelical girl who waited for sex until marriage, i was not prepared for the intense emotions i would feel at age 24 marrying a single dad. not only had my husband "not waited" - he had a kid with someone else! and because of purity culture, it genuinely felt like he had been unfaithful to me. it felt like trauma.

“When I die, I know people will talk about Friends, Friends, Friends. And I’m glad of that, happy I’ve done some solid work as an actor, as well as given people multiple chances to make fun of my struggles on the World Wide Web…” /1 “But when I die, as far as my so-called accomplishments go, it would be nice if Friends were listed far behind the things I did to try to help other people. I know it won’t happen, but it would be nice.” /2

something we don’t talk about enough is how many young christian men are labeled as “p0rn addicts” who are actually not displaying traits of sexually compulsive behavior. 1/6 p*rn is a complex topic but there are studies that show religiously affiliated men who report the least amount of p*rn usage report the highest rates of “addiction.” 2/6

🧵 What people don’t understand is that the Duggar parents are not monsters.

They are people who became harnessed by an ideology that was predicated on fear and control.

Do not get me wrong- they have behaved monstrously. And Josh, specifically, is a monster. /1 But fundamentalism does what it promises- it fundamentally alters people and tells them to go against their instincts of what is right.

IMHO, Jim Bob and Michelle love their children.

And this is *not* excusing their behavior, or dismissing it with “all parents screw up”- /2

When my daughter got her autism diagnosis almost three years ago, they told me that she had high support needs and that she may never speak.

And when I told people that, they automatically redirected me to “success stories.” /1 “My cousin’s wife’s neighbor’s kid was told the same thing and now he’s in mainstream education and never stops talking!”

“I didn’t talk until I was 4, now I’m getting my PhD in quantum physics!”

And while I truly appreciate the sentiment…I think it is not what I needed. /2

🧵 Mental load + invisible labor, a gender reversal:

My dad always got the oil changed in my cars from the time I could drive until I graduated college. I never thought about it. Had no idea how often it even happened, what it cost, etc. /1 When I moved a thousand miles away at 22, I vaguely remember my dad reminding me that I needed to get the oil changed in my car. But apparently it just went in one ear and out the other, bc my engine started knocking and my car shut down 🫠 /2

Obligation sex can have a profoundly negative effect on your sex life.

When you think about the amount of evangelical women who were told “you may not always want it, but sometimes we do things we don’t want to do.”

But neurons that fire together, wire together. /1 So when you have sex that you don’t really *want* to be having, your brain is connecting the feelings of obligation and duty to sex.

And then if you try to have sex when you *do* want to have it, your brain is having to essentially rewire. /2