Eggshellsnytimes.comLike all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.
Interesting links, noteworthy journalism and other miscellanea from around the web.
Drips
For New York Magazine, Clio Chang investigates the dripping water on the subway:
Next, we move downstairs to the platform. Bostick tells me that the deeper you are, the nastier the water may be, since it has more time to pick up gross stuff as it travels through the bowels of the subway infrastructure. Here, we find a puddle on the ground. We decide to take a sample, even though it wasn’t technically part of our inquiry, and Bostick sucks it up with a syringe. We agree that this stale floor liquid, with its unsettlingly yellow hue, is much nastier than the drips. “Don’t drink this,” Bostick says, as if the thought had remotely crossed my mind.
Couples therapyI’ve been working as a psychologist seeing individuals and couples since the mid-1990s, and in the past eight years, I’ve witnessed a tremendous change in the kinds of conversations couples can have. Not long ago, if I would ask a couple about the ways class or race played out between them, I’d typically be met with an awkward shrug and a change of topic. But recent events have reshaped the national conversation on power, privilege, gender norms, whiteness and systemic racism. Together these ideas have pushed us to think, talk, argue and become aware of the many implicit biases we all carry about our identities, unconscious assumptions that privilege some and inflict harm on others. These insights have also made it easier for people to realize there may be plenty of other unconscious assumptions undergirding their positions. I’ve been surprised and excited by the impact of this new understanding, and it has all made my work as a couples therapist easier.