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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 13h

Maybe they could go windsurfing together?

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 13h

Wrote a thing Monday. Got held back and is a weekend read at the Guardian today. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

While the criminal justice system should address reports of rape, we know that rates of conviction are appallingly low for a number of reasons. Although, thanks to feminist interventions, the legal system is better equipped to understand this crime and less prejudiced against victims, we will not change the world through that means.

After rape allegations at Cornell University, why are women again being urged to talk to their sons? Why not men?
Gaby Hinsliff
Gaby Hinsliff
Read more
Sexual assault arises in part through both the entitlement and the desire to abuse and dehumanize women, which is in part about definitions of both masculinity and femininity: masculinity in that domination, violation and degradation are seen as status-enhancing, femininity in the perception that women’s bodies are for men to use, women’s voices and rights to be ignored.

The most compelling thing I’ve read in response to the Cornell case is in an essay by feminist writer Soraya Chemaly. She cites anthropologist Peggy Sanday, who told her that there are “rape-prone” and “rape-free” societies: “She found that in rape-free cultures, women have far more authority, status, safety and freedom.”

They’re societies in which women’s rights to bodily and social self-determination are respected, and a man who violates those rights would face severe consequences. “Rape-prone cultures, on the other hand, treat rape as an entitlement in a system that revolves around masculine contests and hierarchies.”

rest at link

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

An honor to witness your courage and perseverance in this moment.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And by a current Cornell student: "This putrid treatment of women did not originate in this house. It is a culture created over years of “tradition,” and it is what fraternities are built to produce, no matter what we say about the usual exceptions to the rule."

english.elpais.com

Cornell, abolish your fraternities

The case surrounding the ‘Cornell 7′ is as lurid as it gets; whether or not these men face prosecution, it will not change the structural issue with Greek life

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Be the iceberg you want to see in the world.

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Bryce Covert @brycecovert.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Fascinating new study of New Mexico's universal childcare program, first of its kind, finds the program dramatically increased work for lower-income moms www.the74million.org/zero2eight/n...

the74million.org

Nearly a Year In, Universal Childcare Is Reshaping Work for Moms in New Mexico

A new study highlights some early impacts of universal childcare on labor supply for mothers in New Mexico.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It would be a front for their own power and control, of course.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Big fan of this book (obviously): www.sonorajha.com/how-to-raise...

Sonora Jha

HOW TO RAISE A FEMINIST SON

A love story that will resonate with feminists who hope to change the world, one kind boy at a time

From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, we have big work to do when it comes to our boys. This empowering book offers much-needed insight and actionable advice. It’s also a beautifully written and deeply personal story of struggling, failing, and eventually succeeding at raising a feminist son.
Informed by the author’s work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, and other parents and boys, this book follows one mother’s journey to raise a feminist son as a single immigrant woman of color in America. Through stories from her own life and wide-ranging research, Sonora Jha shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force.
Includes chapter takeaways, and an annotated bibliography of reading and watching recommendations for adults and children.

Praise For How To Raise A Feminist Son

"Jha issues an urgent, fervent plea to raise feminist sons in this trenchant guide. At times touching and always impassioned, this is an excellent resource for like-minded parents."
—Publishers Weekly

“You can’t punish your way to a more feminist world, I’ve long believed; you have to create, encourage, invent that world, especially in how you raise kids, but that’s only one reason Sonora Jha’s book is exhilarating and inspiring. It’s a beautiful hybrid of memoir, manifesto, instruction manual, and rumination on the power of story and possibilities of family I can’t wait to put in the hands of everyone raising kids or thinking about how we do it and how it could be different.”
—Rebecca Solnit, author of The Mother of All Questions

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm glad you survived and I'm glad you can tell the story. And though he might still be around, something in his soul died and rotted and reduced his humanity and he probably never knew it because self-awareness is not a hobby of rapists.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

“paving the way for an artificial sense of unity among Jewish people from all over the globe," because, say, being Jewish didn't give them a sense of unity? Kind of like being Muslim or Catholic or Hindu might? Jesus (who was Jewish) wept.

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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Today, 8 years ago, my friend, Saudi Journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Wrote about Cuomo during the NYC primary: www.meditationsinanemergency.com/on-feminism-...

I went back to James's report on Cuomo's serial sexual harrassment and it is gross, disturbing reading in which woman after woman came forward with accounts of --well, read the report for yourself at this link. Here's just the first of the thirteen women who went on the record. She remained anonymous publicly but was known to the makers of the report as she described: "touching and grabbing of Executive Assistant #1’s butt during hugs and, on one occasion, while taking selfies with him; and comments and jokes by the Governor about Executive Assistant #1’s personal life and relationships, including calling her and another assistant 'mingle mamas,' inquiring multiple times about whether she had cheated or would cheat on her husband, and asking her to help find him a girlfriend. These offensive interactions, among others, culminated in an incident at the Executive Mansion in November 2020 when the Governor, during another close hug with Executive Assistant #1, reached under her blouse and grabbed her breast. For over three months, Executive Assistant #1 kept this groping incident to herself and planned to take it 'to the grave,' but found herself becoming emotional (in a way that was visible to her colleagues in the Executive Chamber) while watching the Governor state, at a press conference on March 3, 2021, that he had never 'touched anyone inappropriately.' She then confided in certain of her colleagues..."
“In my mind, I never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn't realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” Cuomo said at the time. In translation, he's saying he was exercising what were formerly considered his rights, in a world where women lacked the right to not be touched and spoken to inappropriately, in which the workplace could be and often was a hostile and degrading place for women, and in which men were free to make it so. rest at link/2000 word limit

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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 02/10/2026

Their mission is the pursuit of human rights for their technology designed to deprive you of human rights.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

p.p.s. LETITIA James and my kingdom for a horse and an edit feature.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

p.s. Should note re Spitzer: you can debate the sex-work question but there was lying, money laundering, blackmail-ability, and Mrs. Spitzer forced to do one of the most degrading stand-by-your-man appearances I can recall.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

but the women coming to her aid initially got their jobs when men who abused women were forced to leave, thank you feminism. And yeah, I keep receipts.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

who include the local district attorney who after failing to open an investigation or ask real questions who was whining about how he's the victim. So the victim in the Cornell case was forced to leave college when some of her persecutors got to stay

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

as a guy with a history of horrific violence against women, which is how Leticia James got the job. Leticia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump until the Supreme Court stepped in, will go after the frat boys and their allies,

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

in the same state where Governor Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign in 2008 because of his involvement as a client of a prostitution ring, which is also the state whose attorney general Eric Schneiderman was forced to resign after being exposed, thank you Ronan Farrow,

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's good news that NY Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed Leticia James special prosecutor in this case, and here remember that Hochul became governor because Governor Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign in disgrace because of his serial sexual harassment...

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

[Pardon my volubility; I had the images because I just filed my Anthropic claim and I am curious about this question and taking a break from thinking about rape culture.]

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It's happened too many times or caused a slow and painful death. Given how swiftly fatal drugs like fentanyl can be, all these botched executions by injection are... I don't even know what to say.

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Angie Nixon @angieforfl.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I don't wanna COUCH my words here: I know JD Vance, his eyeliner, and absent Ashley Moody are used to running away from people when things get tough because they care more about themselves and their billionaire buddies than the people they represent. But this is my home. /1

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some years back had a weird time with academics who were a lot more tolerant than I was of a work fudging the historical record/manipulating primary materials to make the story tidier.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I was not trained as a historian, butwas as a fact-checker, museum researcher, and copyeditor, all within a few years of getting a master's in journalism at Berkeley that was training in gathering and arranging facts and being deeply committed to getting them right as an ethical responsibility.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Not sure what # but this one drew on academic work by disaster sociologists at a time when none of it seemed to be available to a general readership and also included firsthand research with Katrina and 9/11 survivors as well as primary material from the 1906 earthquake, etc.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Seventh was on Muybridge who worked at the intersection of photographic technology, railroad money, and the development of the west/Indian wars. There were no good books on him, though curator Philip Prodger would publish one simultaneously and we'd both contribute to an academic volume after.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Second book: I got to write about the history of Western Shoshone land rights and the representational genocide of Yosemite's indigenous population in the absence of almost anything substantive on those subjects except primary material (and racist Yosemite crap).

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My first book was about the visual artists connected to beat culture in California's 1950s. There was nothing good on them at the time except a few old exhibition catalogues and oral histories because someone was writing the 900th book about Picasso or Pollock instead.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I sometimes get the impression that the insider assumption is or maybe only was that all the primary historical work has been done and now we'll just critique or deepen or refine it rather than that there are huge gaps.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'm thinking about things like going to libraries and seeing case after case of books on the civil war, a tiny handful of books on the Mexican-American war, and just whole subjects that are skipped.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Sometimes academic training seems like training in what to see but also what not to see/notice/address, in that a lot of important histories are not being produced from within the academy.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

So a real historian is a university-certified historian? Shouldn't the definition be "a person who writes history that adheres to certain standards"? Which plenty of writers without certification achieve and some certified ones fail.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Men telling women what an appropriate response to rape culture is is rape culture.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Someday we will have a beverage together and I will be thrilled about that. Let me know if you ever get to San Francisco and I do get to NYC every once in a while. Also FEMINISM FOREVER.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It also seems clear that he and his department put very little effort into figuring out what happened since their line is "they did not serve us all the info on a silver platter while we sat quietly by."

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

On those rare occasions when I see female action-hero movies -- La Femme Nikita, Katniss Everdene, Heroic Trio-- I feel all amped up by mere exposure, and then I think about the constant diet of male action heroes/ geniuses/ born leaders for them and how literally intoxicating that must be.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I mean "we elected a climate destroying Constitution-shredding human-rights-abusing fascist/white supremacist because people said mean things about men on the internet and it's their fault."

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What a damn "she made me do it" line of reasoning. Just like the left is responsible for everything the right does, so women are responsible for everything men do because they're apparently not responsible for themselves.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Please volunteer yourself first and then go around telling all men to stop having sex altogether if you think this is a genius idea or did you think it was more women's work to do?

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