January Links

So I don’t have a written piece for you today on anything in particular. What I do have, however, are lots of other awesome articles and videos you might want to check out instead. I thought I might do a monthly post collating various different things from online that I have enjoyed over the past month. I know various different people and organisations do weekly or monthly online roundup lists; sometimes they are in blog post form sometimes in email newsletters (Nicola of Robotic’s Reading Week is one I particularly enjoy and is available to read on her blog as well as to receive in your email inbox weekly). I thought I’d like to keep everything in one place if that suits everyone. Let me know if this works for you. But without further ado, here are all your links:

1. Famous and Broke on Youtube

This is a great article from Gaby Dunn about how social media followers does not equal dollars and touches on the whole ‘selling out’ accusation so many people jump on when youtubers etc. start to dedicate their time solely to their channel to make a living. Artists should STRUGGLE… well at least that seems to remain to be the loudest opinion. I won’t attempt to summarise the article here, however, so check it out here on Fusion. As well as checking out Gaby’s fantastic channel with flatmate Alison here.

2. Is That a Threat?

The next article is one that sits a little closer to home than internet fame for me and it concerns internet abuse, specifically with a violent sexual overtone that is directed at women. Importantly it also discusses the fact that women online are told to ignore, block, not engage with or try to reason with these people, which can quickly escalates into victim blaming and removing any responsibility for these interactions from the men who initiate them. Read more here.

3. 7 Reasons People Argue Female Privilege Exists – And Why They’re Mistaken

Generally speaking I’ve been reading a lot more articles from Everyday Feminism online, I think after reading this book: Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates. One article that stood out to me in particular this month, however, was this one which discusses myths surrounding female privilege over men. It certainly doesn’t dismiss issues like the higher statistic of male suicide to female suicide but looks more closely at these issues that just simply citing ‘but men are…’ with no evidence to categorise this as female privilege over men. A lot of the points in the article were not things I had necessarily taken the time to think about in detail so I would recommend everyone to give it a read, male or female. It is not about dismissing men but about demonstrating that unlike women who’s life suffers because of male privilege (this is not calling men rapists or blaming them all for suppressing women) an equivalent ‘female privilege’ does not oppress male members of society.

4. The Guardian View on Labour Scottish Tax Pledge

Did you know I’m Scottish? Most likely. Well this year is the Scottish parliamentary elections and parties are making clear their policies before the election. Labour who have been almost eradicated by the SNP in Scotland during the Westminster elections are now preparing to fight for their seats in the Scottish parliament. They recently announced a new policy they will be fighting for which introduces a small increase in tax, and I mean tiny, which could solve a majority of problems in the Scotland concerning the parliament’s inability to fund council services. The SNP have continued to call themselves an anti-austerity party whilst making cuts after cuts to local services under the term ‘savings’ and honestly it is driving me mad. You can’t say your anti-austerity and then not do anything to combat austerity. A small tax increase would prevent so many of these cuts and job losses. Scottish Labour are showing themselves to be inline with Corbyn in Westminster by making this promise and this guardian article does a fantastic job of discussing what their new policy means and how it compares to SNP policy.

5. Two More Articles from Everyday Feminism that deal with Class

And lastly, like I mentioned I have been particularly enjoying the Everyday Feminism website this month and quickly here are two more articles I enjoyed this month:

This article looks at the use of working class accents and mannerisms by non-working class members of the latin community to make others laugh and thus laughing at the working class. I particularly enjoyed this article because a similar thing occurs in almost every community and the use of working class culture to incite laughter is incredibly classist no matter what your ethnicity.

And this article demonstrates the importance of allowing homeless people to own items they are often attacked for having like iPhones. I shall say nothing further but I would HIGHLY recommend you go read this article.

If you want to hear about and check out more of my favourite things from January including youtube videos and podcasts check out my January Favourites video over on my channel BookishThoughts.

If you want to laugh check out this awesome video of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke with Adele.

And for some more videos not linked in my favourites video:

Why Are There No Gay Characters in Disney films?

Years Years Bears (A Song)

What It’s Like to Have a Deformity | Stupid Questions with Leena