5 Feb 2016

Weekly reading: Best longreads on the web

11:33 am on 5 February 2016

Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.

 

Amber Rose and Kim Kardashian.

Amber Rose and Kim Kardashian. Photo: Instagram

Your Boyfriend's Ex-Girlfriend: The Worst Person Ever? - by Lauren Oyler, Broadly

“The internet makes this all a lot worse, of course. Whereas girlfriends and boyfriends of the past might have come upon ex information by way of stumbling upon a box of letters or asking their lover's friends sneaky questions, today you can just Google and find everything from bad blog posts the ex wrote while interning at a PR company in 2008 to photos of her hiding deep in the recesses of abandoned blogs.”

Should We Name Workplace Predators Online? – by Ann Friedman, The Cut

“It’s also up to those of us who care about this problem to realize that we’re playing a long game. A problem that is this deep and widespread practically demands a slow-burn response, not a short-term flame war … For women who have been groped, threatened, and abused by men in their industry, the bravest act is refusing to let these men stop them from doing their jobs.”

"I was told I was going to be raped cause I didn't smile at someone... I was 16" – by Richie Hardcore, Arohardcore

“Nothing happens in a vacuum. We continue to live in and create a culture which, basically treats women like shit. Women get paid less, suffer dramatically higher levels of domestic violence and sexual assault than men. It's the daily sexual innuendo, jokes, harassment and verbal abuse and intimidating behaviour that is a backdrop which helps create the environment for all of this to happen in.”

Fix up, young men – by Russell Brown, Public Address

“It’s not good enough for women to feel at risk because of their age or gender. I understand that’s a fact not just at annual music festivals. But there’s a nasty undertone of exclusion when it happens in this kind of environment – which can only function on trust. When women who love the music these events are supposed to be about can’t trust that they can safely enjoy it.”

Who Gets to Wear a Cheongsam? – by Gina Mei, Racked

“A major part of being mixed is the feeling that you must always announce what you are before someone else does it for you. It's partly an exercise in self-preservation, and partly one of survival: If I can establish what I am in a stranger's mind before they've had the chance to do it for me, I can finally take ownership of who I am.”

How Chris Jackson Is Building a Black Literary Movement – by Vinson Cunningham, The New York Times

“Jackson’s role, then, is to perform nothing less than a kind of magic. He stands between the largely white culture-making machinery and artists writing from the margins of society, as well as between the work of those writers and the largely white critical apparatus that dictates their success, in both cases saying: This, believe it or not, is something you need to hear.”