Daily Archives: December 23, 2021

To the Editors:

In The Dawn of Everything David Graeber and I present a new history of humanity, based on the latest findings in our fields of archaeology and anthropology. These findings challenge long-held assumptions about the origins of inequality, the nature of freedom and slavery, the roots of private property, and the relationship between society and the state. They present fresh opportunities for a dialogue between archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy, but Kwame Anthony Appiah in his review of the book prefers to challenge the empirical basis of our work [NYR, December 16, 2021]. He argues that we distort our sources in order to present an artificially rosy picture of our species past and its prospects for greater freedom.

For example, Appiah is dissatisfied with our account of the Ukrainian mega-sites, huge prehistoric settlements that exhibit no evidence for temples, palaces, central administration, rich burials, or other signs of social inequality. We note that population levels are estimated in the many thousands per mega-site, and probably well over 10,000 in some cases. Appiah alleges that these figures are inflated, based on a discredited maximalist model. He cites archaeologist John Chapman in support. According to Appiah, Chapman argues that the mega-sites were not cities at all, but seasonally occupied festival grounds.

In fact, Chapman proposes three models of habitation, ranging from seasonal to relatively permanent habitation. He discounts none of them and argues thatwhichever one adoptsthe mega-sites can indeed be considered cities, and strikingly egalitarian ones at that. Far from adopting a maximalist model, the population figures we give in The Dawn of Everything are more conservative than those offered by some other archaeologists, which range above 40,000. Appiah has misrepresented our position, and Chapmans, to create a false impression.

Elsewhere, Appiah alleges that we mischaracterize the work of Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an expert on the Bronze Age civilization of the Indus Valley. According to Appiah, Kenoyer argues that the ancient site of Mohenjo-daro was likely governed as a city-state, something we dispute in The Dawn of Everything. We are hardly the first to do so. Another expert, Gregory Possehl, argued that the Indus cities were organized on more egalitarian lines, and the most recent scholarship comes down firmly on his side. We dont cite Kenoyer for his views on political organization, but for his work on urban craft specialization. So what is Appiahs objection? Is he saying we cannot cite Kenoyers insights on any one aspect of Indus archaeology without subscribing to all his other views as well? Does Appiahs own citation of Alvin Goldman on causal theories of knowledge grant us license to assume he agrees with Goldman on social epistemology?

With regard to Mesopotamia, Appiah accuses us of drifting, in the space of a hundred pages, from a negative characterization of Uruks early phasesas lacking evidence for monarchyto their positive characterization as examples of collective self-rule. He forgets the ground we cover in those pages, which review diligent work on the topic by Assyriologists, ancient historians, and archaeologists. What it shows is that, even in later periods of monarchy and empire, Mesopotamian cities exhibited a remarkable degree of self-governance through neighborhood assemblies, local wards, and councils. Where does Appiah think those forms of urban self-government came from? Would he have us believe the inhabitants of the earliest cities had no knowledge of them?

With reference to Teotihuacan, in the Valley of Mexico, Appiah suggests that few archaeologists would countenance the views of art historian Esther Pasztory about the citys political structure. But the opposite is true. The latest archaeological studies vindicate Pasztorys view that Teotihuacanos rejected dynastic personality cults and built a society where wealth, resources, and high-quality housing were distributed in a more equal fashion. We could have listed every dissenting opinion, but thenas we say in the bookwe are trying to strike a balance:

Had we tried to outline or refute every existing interpretation of the material we covered, this book would have been two or three times the size, and likely would have left the reader with a sense that the authors are engaged in a constant battle with demons who were in fact two inches tall.

Appiah presents as novel our claim that the Neolithic site of atalhyk, in Turkey, lacks evidence of central authority. In fact, this is the consensus among archaeologists. Ian Hodder, longtime site director, characterizes atalhyk as a fiercely egalitarian community that, despite its large size, held inequality at bay for a thousand years. If our agendaas Appiah insistswere to find some primordial utopia among our Neolithic ancestors, surely we would have embraced this conclusion. In fact, we question it, pointing out the likelihood of seasonal variations in the social organization of the town. According to Appiah, we see in atalhyk a gynocentric society. Not so. We draw attention to the importance of womens knowledge and roles in these early Neolithic societies, but thats hardly the same thing.

Most of the archaeological ground covered in The Dawn of Everything lies beyond the scope of Appiahs review, as does nearly all of the anthropology. His criticisms of our intellectual history rest on a surprisingly naive and unfounded expectation that what academics write will necessarily mirror their personal politics. Learn to respect, and love, and be intimate with, a man of a far distant stage of life, and you see then how very deep down is the wide platform of elemental feeling and thought which you have together in common, wrote the archaeologist Flinders Petrie in 1898. Petrie was also a fervent eugenicist.

Appiah claims we have a thesis, that Europeans, before the Enlightenment, lacked the concept of social (in)equality. In fact, we give a whole series of examples to the contrary. The question we ask is more specific: How did a consensus form among European intellectuals that human beingsinnocent of civilizationlived in societies of equals, such that it made sense to inquire as to the origins of inequality? Appiahs evocations of Gregory the Great, Thomas Mntzer, Montaigne, and the rest are beside the point, becausewhile all express powerful sentiments of equality and inequalitynone root those ideas in a search for its origins.

The notion of a primordial society of equals may have pre-Enlightenment roots in Europe, notably in the constitutional antiquarianism of the seventeenth century (brilliantly discussed by J.G.A. Pocock in The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law). Jurists appealed to the customary freedoms of a preliterate past as a legal foil to royal absolutism. But Appiah makes no mention of that, or whether he thinks such juridical concepts were already extended beyond specific peoples and nations to humankind in general. Perhaps because he knows the answer. They were not, or at least, not yet.

Rousseaus answer, in 1754, to the novel question What is the origin of inequality? was, we argue, a synthesis between ideals of human freedomshaped by Native American critiques of European societyand the concept of history as stages of technological progress, which was then gaining ground through the writings of A.R.J. Turgot. The just-so story told by Rousseau gave us our modern concept of civilization, whereby each step toward cultural advancementthe invention of agriculture, metallurgy, writing, cities, and the arts, even philosophy itselfcame with a loss of freedoms. Its a familiar and deeply ambivalent story. As we show in The Dawn of Everything, it is also at odds with the facts of modern archaeology and anthropology.

Appiah finds our reading of Rousseaus Discourse on Inequality perplexing. How, he asks, could Rousseau promulgate the indigenous critique of European societywith its passionate advocacy of freedomand smother it at the same time? But surely this is precisely why myths endure. As Claude Lvi-Strauss observed, myths take root in the human imagination by evoking profound oppositions (Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains) and then work to mediate those contradictions. We will not find our future in our past, writes Appiah. But myths are not just about our past. They work in the present to circumscribe our understanding of human possibilities. In The Dawn of Everything, we show that conventional tellings of the broad sweep of human history are one such myth, inculcating a profound sense of pessimism about the prospects for change in our societies.

Archaeology, like all historical reconstruction, is partly a work of imagination. But it is constrained by evidence, and underpinned by scientific principles of discovery, interpretation, and refutation. Occasionally, it has the power to challenge myths and overthrow dogma. The strength of the past lies precisely there, in its unpredictability, its capacity to surprise and upset conventional wisdom. Today the information available to us, even for remote periods of the human past, reveals a kaleidoscope of social possibilities undreamed of in the philosophies of Hobbes and Rousseau, and also, it seems, in the philosophy of Appiah.

David WengrowProfessor of Comparative ArchaeologyUniversity College LondonUnited Kingdom

The Dawn of Everything is a mammoth undertaking and, inevitably, it characterizes archaeological research its authors know only through the scholarly literature they have consultedthrough the authorities they enlist. Theyre entitled to sift through the evidence and present their own conclusions; I agree with Wengrow on this. The difficulty arises when what they present as a summary of the archaeology is at variance with the scholarship they cite. Experts have largely come to agree that theres no evidence foranything like what we would recognize as a state in the urban civilization of the Indus Valley, they say. Then we turn to the source material and find that experts are quite divided on the topic. My point was not that The Dawn of Everything mischaracterizes Kenoyers judgments about Mohenjo-daros political structure but that it doesnt characterize them at all. I was observing, that is, a pattern about which views get a hearing. Wengrow says that the most recent scholarship supports Possehl, but the paper he has in minda fascinating theoretical overview by Adam S. Green, which indeed stresses the evidence for egalitarianismgingerly dissents both from Kenoyers managerial elite model and from Possehls stateless paradigm. Greens paper, exquisitely provisional, makes clear that the nature of Indus politics is a topic of contention, not consensus.

The Dawn of Everything likewise suggests that archaeological research has converged on the view that Teotihuacan, starting around 300 AD, embraced egalitarianism and collective governance and rejected overlords, even strong leaders. Its what all the evidence suggests. We hear that other scholars, eliminating virtually every other possibility, arrived at similar conclusions; we hear that its self-conscious egalitarianism is affirmed by a general consensus among those who know the site best. But only a strategy of bifurcation would force us to say that the place was either purely autocratic or purely collective. What I observed was not that few archaeologists would countenance Pasztorys view but that we get no sense that many have reached different conclusions.

Those archaeologists include the authorities The Dawn of Everything cites in support of Pasztory, such as Ren Millon, who cataloged evidence of hierarchy and militarism in Teotihuacan, and thought its governance might have become oligarchical; and George Cowgill, who explicitly demurs from Pasztorys utopian account and proposes Renaissance Venice, a republic under a doge, as a model. The epigrapher David Stuart says that, in the late fourth and early fifth century, someone represented by an owlish glyph was the king of Teotihuacan, while other archaeologists conjecture that there might have been an elite assembly or aristocracy rather than a monarch; this glyph might have designated an office rather than an officeholder. Recent discoveries have rekindled such debates. Again, Graeber and Wengrow are free to reach their own conclusion as to whether Teotihuacan was a utopian experiment in urban life, but it cannot be said to represent a professional consensus.

As for the at least seven centuries of collective self-rule that Uruk enjoyed, per Graeber and Wengrow, is the proof really to be found in the wards and councils of the monarchical era? Or does the very coexistence of monarchs and councils suggest that we may be building castles, or communes, in the air? I dont say that Uruk did or didnt enjoy those seven centuries of collective self-rule, but unless the term is being used in a very permissive way, I struggle to see how this possibility qualifies as a settled fact.

With respect to atalhyk, my discussion didnt take up The Dawn of Everythings broad political characterization of the place. It took up what inferences we should draw from the existence of female figurines, and the putative absence of equivalent male ones. Did such representations demonstrate a new awareness of womens status? Graeber and Wengrow never use the term gynocentric with respect to atalhyk; they use, in this context, the term matriarchal and devote a few helpful paragraphs to defining this term in a special way that sidesteps the -archy, the connection with rulership. (I avoided the term matriarchal because, without their careful definition, it risks implying a form of rulership The Dawn of Everything disputes.) Graeber and Wengrow, following Hodder, find it obvious that the female figurines, with their pendulous breasts and avoirdupois, could have nothing to do with eros or fertility but are quite possibly matriarchs of some sort, their forms revealing an interest in female elders. Here, questions arise. One is whether wed weigh the evidence differently had The Dawn of Everything mentioned that most atalhyk figurines that archaeologists have cataloged are of quadrupeds (or their horns).

Why does this matter? Because when it comes to a certain class of casesprehistoric cities that they think lacked a ruling or managerial eliteGraeber and Wengrow appear to cherish their thesis a little too much and, like overprotective parents, tend to keep it away from the chilly drafts of adverse evidence. Which brings us to those Ukrainian mega-sites. In a 2017 article, John Chapman methodically challenges the view of them as permanent, long-term settlements comprising many thousands of people, a view he divides into a maximalist and a standard model. Drawing on evidence from his work in Nebelivka and calculations based on available evidence about the other sites, he concludes that

the only logical response is to replace the standard model (not to mention the maximalist model) with a version of the minimalist model that envisions a less permanent, more seasonal settlement mode, or a smaller permanent settlement involving coeval dwelling of far fewer people.

Perhaps there was a small year-round population; perhaps these were sites where hundreds of pilgrims or festival-goers showed up in a seasonal way; perhaps both occurred.

In this account, what wed find on the mega-sites, even one as expansive as Taljanky, arent citiesthat is, these settlements are remote from the dictionary definition of a city, from what we readers understand by the word, and, as best as I can judge, from what Graeber and Wengrow mean by it. They say most archaeologists will call any densely inhabited settlement of 150 or 200 hectares a city; yet one thing Chapman is confident about is that the mega-sites were low-density settlements.

Now, archaeologists sometimes use the word city differently; the idea is that if a settlement, including one that looks like a hamlet, is the biggest thing around, it might function as a city. A hundred people living in face-to-face autarky, a seasonal festival site like Burning Man: even these could, in the right circumstances, count as cities. The paper Wengrow cites, though it pointedly declines to define city, sets aside absolute scale as a prerequisite. For Graeber and Wengrow, however, a central question is whether lots of people can live in a dense settlement without rules and rulers. Thats why they say cities often emerged as civic experiments on a grand scale. In their concept of a city, absolute scale cant be set aside.

Nor should we set aside the vigorous medieval arguments about the nature and origins of social inequality, as when The Dawn of Everything states that in the Middle Ages social equalityand therefore, its opposite, inequalitysimply did not exist as a concept. Many thought, as Pope Gregory did, that people, in their primordial, Edenic state, were equal in their liberty. Then some act of human sinfulness left us with masters and serfs. For Gregory, Christs redemptive sacrifice was meant to bring back our original freedom. Such arguments had real-world reverberations. When Adam delved and Eve span/Who was then the gentleman? was an English saying that the priest John Ball declaimed amid the 1381 Peasants Revolt, calling for a primordial classless society to be restored by force.

Wengrows cautions about personal politics are well taken; Lvi-Strausss emerging conservatism is no key to his thought. By contrast, the political tenets Lewis Henry Morgan espoused within the book that entrenched social evolutionism were integral to his intellectual vision. Thorstein Veblens theory of predatory and productive activities seamlessly connected his prehistory to his politics. And so it goes; we would do the great James C. Scott, whose studies have been invaluable to people from a range of ideological positions, a disservice to suppose that his political vision and his political science belonged in separate bins.

Yet this procession of caveats, I fear, risks obscuring The Dawn of Everythings real triumphs. It is the work of two remarkable scholars, and almost every page is energized by their intelligence, imagination, and surly sense of mischief. When it comes to confident claims about dense large-scale settlements free of rulers or rules (or, for that matter, the Haudenosaunee attitude toward commands), readers might well adopt Gertrude Steins mot Interesting if true. But as I hope I made plain, theres much more to the book than that. Graeber and Wengrows argument against historical determinismagainst the alluring notion that what happened had to have happenedis itself immensely valuable. Readers who imagine foragers on the Sahlinesque model of the San will encounter foraging societies with aristocrats and slavery, while the books account of the Poverty Point earthworks is a riveting study of collective action. We get an intriguing proposal about the nature of the state. And this is just to begin a long list of fascinations. That kaleidoscope of social possibilities emerges vibrantly from these pages.

If readers should be a little cautiouspossibilities may not be probabilitiesthey should be much more than a little grateful, as I am. This book is mainly about freedom, Graeber and Wengrow tell us, but its also for freedom. Im glad of that; oddly enough, freedom needs advocates these days, and few have been as eloquent.

The print version of this reply referred to the Ukrainian mega-sites as the Trypillia mega-sites, using the name of the Neolithic people who built them.

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The Roots of Inequality: An Exchange | by David Wengrow - The New York Review of Books

California is more than a place, its an idea. And we have Joan Didion to thank for that.

More than 100 years ago, when Southern California wasnt much more than an winter escape for cold Midwesterners, a group of local boosters began pitching the area as a kind of Shangri-La. The humidity was low. There were beaches (never mind that they were lined with a briar patch of oil derricks). Elegant Mexican fan palms lined the streets. And there was space, so much more so than in the cramped dirty cities of the East.

The pitch worked and as the twentieth century got underway, Southern California boomed. The legend goes that filmmakers fled New York thanks to Thomas Edisons stranglehold on technology, and soon Hollywood originally a simple housing development called Hollywoodland became a symbol for new money, new opportunity, and new ambition.

And then something soured.

You can see it in movies like Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard andChinatown and Night Crawler. You can see it in the news, as the dream of hippie utopias congealed into the Manson murders. The myth of New York is about bravado. Its Frank Sinatras New York and Alicia Keyz and Jay Zs Empire State of Mind.

But the myth of California is different. Its a story about ease and pleasure on top of something malignant. And its this weird dichotomy that makes California and particularly Los Angeles at once alluring and dangerous. The world is dotted with places that have good weather or beaches. But theres nowhere that mixes sunshine and seediness quiet the way Southern California does.

Didion, who died Thursday at the age of 87 from Parkinsons disease, was one of the primary architects of this myth and by extension one of the people most responsible for Californias enduring appeal to strivers and dreamers the world over. Without Didion, there might not be a line of buyers lined up for all those California Spanish houses everyone is nuts about in the Hollywood Hills. Los Angeles might as well be Miami or San Diego.

Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne in Los Angeles in October 1972. Credit: Frank Edwards, Fotos International and Getty Images

Didion was born in 1934 in Sacramento. Her family descended from the ill-fated Donner Party. By the 1950s, she had earned a bachelors in English from the University of California, Berkeley. She soon landed a job at Vogue, and by the 1960s was a rising star in the New Journalism movement, which tried to inject elements of novelistic flair and subjectivity into news reporting. Her writing appeared in the most prestigious and widely read publications of the era.

Though she ended up based in New York for her writing gigs, Didions fame particularly grew as she chronicled the counterculture movement of 1960s California. In 1967, she wrote an essay titled Slouching Toward Bethlehem about her time in San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district. Nothing much happens in the essay. Theres no breaking news or overarching story. But it captured a gritty realism that, at the time, electrified readers.

By 1968, the essay became the title piece in a groundbreaking collection that explores the California myth. The collections opening essay was dubbed Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, but chronicled the trial of a woman convicted of murdering her husband. Didion sympathizes with the woman, but the line between the California dream and a nightmare is a hazy one.

Buried near the end of Slouching Toward Bethlehem Didion included another essay, Los Angeles Notebook, that captures her Golden State thesis. The essay ponders the Santa Anas, hot dry winds that come racing into the Los Angeles basin each year. Didion wrote that in the lead up to the the winds arriving, there was something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension.

I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too, she continued. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.

Didion went on to describe the Santa Anas as a persistent malevolent wind, linking them to suicide and unhappiness.

The heat was surreal, Didion wrote. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called earthquake weather. My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake.

Its strange to think of passages like this, or of essays about murderous housewives, building the myth of California. They run exactly counter to the effort of the regions early boosters, who billed the state as an easy-going paradise. Why would anyone want to go to a place that is hot and seedy?

But Didions writing walked a tightrope. It cast California as a place where sweet ocean breezes swirled together with the malevolent winds from the east. To be in California, or become a Californian, was to strive for utopia while taking your chances with chaos. Theres some danger in the idea of California, and thats part of the appeal.

Following Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Didion would go on to have a prolific career. She published dozens of works that include fiction, nonfiction and screenplays. A cultural icon, her work is still hotly debated today.

Its difficult to quantify the ultimate impact of this work. But theres little doubt that Didion, as an architect of the California myth, influenced the desire for life in the state. And despite high costs and a changing cultural landscape, a brief chat with any real estate agent from the region is enough to learn that theres still plenty of demand for the myth, freedom and chaos of California.

Email Jim Dalrymple II

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Joan Didion, architect of the California myth, dead at 87 - Inman

Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) -- The literary landscape has never been richer or more reflective of our present moment.

Compassionate depictions of the ongoing refugee crisis won Zanzibar-British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, while American writer Jason Mott took home the National Book Award for his novel on the racism, police brutality and the Black experience in the United States.

To help readers navigate the inexhaustible list of books published this year, we've asked influential tastemakers -- including writers, actors, photographers and creative directors -- to share their favorite reads of 2021.

Whether hard-hitting ruminations on the state of public health or a visual anthology of contemporary African artists, these are the books today's cultural heavyweights had glued to their nightstand.

Apatow -- whose filmography includes comedic touchstones such as "Superbad" (2007), "Bridesmaids" (2011) and "The King of Staten Island" (2020) -- recommends the memoir of another industry legend, Mel Brooks. His book, "All About Me," reveals behind-the-scenes anecdotes of life during the Golden Age of Show Business.

"Finally, the Mel Brooks autobiography all comedy nerds have dreamed of for so long," Apatow told CNN Style. "As the world stumbles into madness, we should all take a moment to read this book and appreciate the brilliant comedy and biting satire of our greatest American filmmaker. Sure, most people think drama is harder and fancier -- but it ain't!"

Lowry, an art historian and the director of MoMA since 1995, recommends "Better to Have Gone: Love, Death and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville," a personal memoir by Akash Kapur that chronicles the life of his in-laws, who met in a utopian community in 1960s South India.

"Written with insight and compassion, 'Better to Have Gone' takes us on the journey of the author and his wife as they seek to reconstruct the events that brought them together as children and then shaped their lives as adults," said Lowry. "At the same time, the book also explores the rivalries and tensions that defined Auroville's early years and what it means to try to create a utopian environment."

"One of my favorite books of this year is 'Aftershocks' by Nadia Owusu." Yousafzai told CNN Style. "This beautiful memoir tells the story of a girl who was abandoned by her mother at age 2 and orphaned at 13 when her beloved father dies. The story follows Nadia's life from growing up in Tanzania, Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana and Uganda to landing in Brooklyn as a young adult trying to create her own solid ground after a tumultuous childhood."

Malala first spoke out against the Taliban regime in 2008 when she delivered a speech denouncing the ban imposed on female education. She became a target and fled Pakistan in 2012.

"The book resonated with me as someone who shares the specific struggle of rebuilding their life in an unfamiliar country. But in reading 'Aftershocks' with my Literati book club, I found that many women in our group could relate to Nadia's struggle to define her identity and sense of home."

Kaia Gerber, Model of the Year 2018 and book club-enthusiast, recommends The New York Times bestselling memoir "Crying in H Mart" by Grammy nominated musician-turned-author Michelle Zaumer.

"It's a beautiful memoir about growing up Korean-American, finding identity and coping with grief," Gerber said. "Michelle recounts the last days she spent with her mother through a diary of food. This book is filled with so much emotion and raw honesty. A true exploration into the complexities of grief and the way we find connection in the sometimes unexpected little things. Heartbreaking and beautiful, this book has stuck with me every day since I read it."

The book is now set to become a feature film after Orion Pictures bought the rights this summer.

"The book I have been spending the most time with is a small art book from 2021," Tunick, who is best known for his expansive nude shoots involving hundreds of people, told CNN Style.

"It's not a narrative book but a pocket-sized compact art book that I keep by the side of my bed to get lost in thought and help me sleep. The book is of photographs, illustrations and paintings of hands. I have been very interested in small art books lately, that take the place of an iPhone or Instagram. The book is a talisman. The book as an object."

Tunick's most recent work took place at the Dead Sea in Israel.

Dissent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recommends "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. The work is an interdisciplinary investigation into how structural inequality has a negative physiological impact on our health.

"The book is powerful and dynamic," said Ai, who has exhibited his controversial work at the Tate Modern in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Louvre in Paris.

"As the book provides a lot of information, including new research results and historical materials, it makes readers eager to know more and have a more in-depth understanding of what the writer is really trying to say. It's very rich indeed, a bit like an encyclopedia about contemporary society, environment and medical language. It is very interesting."

Babalola received an advance copy of Caleb Azumah Nelson's "Open Water," a poetic ode to Black love that follows a young male photographer and female dancer in modern-day London, back in 2020.

"I found myself constantly returning to it this year," the British-Nigerian writer told CNN Style. "Not only is it richly written, with a sweeping lyricism propelling the narrative, but it is such a moving exploration of love, the discovering, the learning, the embracing.

"(Open Water) is a love letter to South London, and Blackness, not as a stolid phenomenon, but something that molds around our individuality, our humanity, our nuanced beauty. Despite often veering into darkness, it never strays too far from the light, from hope -- it is a message I carry with me about life itself, particularly in the midst of global turmoil. Very grateful for this book."

Babalola's debut novel, "Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold" quickly became a Sunday Times bestseller.

Rousteing, the creative director of luxury fashion house Balmain, recommends a new, painterly edition of the seminal text "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" by Gertrude Stein.

Originally published in 1933, the book is considered the ultimate account of an American in Paris -- chronicling Stein and Toklas' avant-garde life as they rubbed shoulders with Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Henri Matisse.

"This colorful re-edition of Gertrude Stein's classic, filled with dozens of fantastic illustrations by Maira Kalman, offered me the perfect escape from the anxiety that we all felt during the worst months of the pandemic, as Paris went through curfews and lockdowns." To celebrate a decade at the helm of Balmain, Rousteing has published his own graphic novel.

Vaid-Menon, a gender nonconforming creative, recommends "The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism," an intersectional nonfiction work by Kyla Schuller.

"I'm a firm believer that we have to learn history to inform our future," Vaid-Menon said. "(This book) is a rigorous historical scholarship that couldn't be more timely. It's meticulously researched and phenomenally written in a relatable and even charismatic style. Each chapter compares a historical white feminist figure like Elizabeth Cady Stanton alongside an intersectional feminist peer from her time like Frances Harper.

"Instead of just critiquing the limitations of white feminism, Dr. Schuller highlights the expansive intersectional feminisms that have always existed alongside it. In this way, it's a hopeful and refreshing read that invites us to dream bigger and imagination more for feminism."

In 2020, Vaid-Menon wrote a think piece pushing for a new, more inclusive beauty paradigm.

Sir Adjaye, the British-Ghanian architect who has designed notable buildings such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, recommends "African Artists: From 1882 to Now," a visual anthology mapping the continent's cultural contributions through more than 300 artists.

"(This book) presents the brilliant legacies of more than one hundred years of critical, cultural, sociopolitical and expressive engagement of and for Africa," Adjaye told CNN Style.

"This text surveys the meaning of art on the continent and demonstrates how expression itself is a deep entanglement not only with time, from the reckoning of modernism into the electric post-independence era, but the entanglement we as Africans have with our landscape. Our expression is our ability to tap into art's imaginative possibility -- the radical possibility of dreaming ourselves, our lands and our identity otherwise."

TV host and executive producer of the CNN original series "This Is Life with Lisa Ling," Ling recommends "In the Weeds" by fellow presenter Tom Vitale.

"I have had the pleasure of working with Tom on our HBOMax show, 'Take Out,' that will premiere in the beginning of next year along with Helen Cho," Ling told CNN Style. "Tom is brilliant, gentle and quite introspective. He recently penned a gripping and deeply personal book about traveling the world with the great Anthony Bourdain -- called 'In the Weeds.' Tom traveled to over 100 countries with Tony as his director and producer.

"His book details the utter frenzy and chaos of the shoots but also of his relationship with an incredibly complex but extraordinary man. The writing is truly sensational and visceral -- I feel like I was there. And now I need a drink, or two."

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The best books of 2021, according to global tastemakers - WDJT

Seeing the community come together this holiday season hiking on trails or strolling through retail centers with family and friends is especially rewarding knowing that 50 years ago next week, Irvine formally incorporated as a city.

That historic moment, on December 28, 1971, made it possible for the new City of Irvine and Irvine Company to fulfill the Master Plans vision of balanced and responsible growth while preserving 60% of the Irvine Ranch as open space.

It isnt every day a reporter gets a chance to observe the birth of a new city, the Daily Pilots George Leidal wrote at the time. Somehow the past few weeks have led me to feel like Ive just been assigned to cover, via time capsule, the sailing of the Mayflower.

Unlike any other in history, Leidal predicted, Irvine may indeed set the standard for a new city.

And it has. Today, Irvine ranks nationally as the best place to live for its parks, safety, fiscal strength and schools, all surrounding a world-class university.

In recognition of this, the Los Angeles Times recently published At 50, New City of Irvine is Evergreen, describing Irvines Master Plan as a Blueprint for a Green Utopia that, decade-after-decade, has created a diverse and sustainable city with a tremendous quality of life.

As 2022 approaches, we look forward to seeing you on the trails and throughout our community as we cover the people, places and experiences that make Irvine such a wonderful place to live, work and play.

Happy Holidays!

The Irvine Standard

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Congratulations, Irvine, on a golden anniversary - Irvine Standard

By casting the fight against critical race theory (CRT) and general wokeness as an existential struggle for Americas soul, Gov. Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisBiden resists shutdowns as omicron threat rises Sunday shows preview: COVID-19 cases surge amid omicron wave Will or should Kamala Harris become the Spiro Agnew of 2022? MORE (R-Fla.) has made a grab for the reins of a movement that awaits a political leader.

Sure, Virginias Gov.-elect, Glenn YoungkinGlenn YoungkinLiberals disappointed after Biden's first year Photos of the Week: Tornado aftermath, Medal of Honor and soaring superheroes Governors grapple with vaccine mandates ahead of midterms MORE, won on the strength of his vow to fight CRTs inroads in the Old Dominion, and that is to his credit. But parents pushed him into it; DeSantis has been far more proactive and comprehensive in fighting CRT and wokeness.

At a recent rally, DeSantis took aim at the totalizing threat of cultural transformation:

I think what you see now with the rise of this woke ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history and our institutions, DeSantissaid, adding that a cultural Marxism of which CRT is a prime example, is designed to tear at the fabric of our society and our culture and things that really weve taken for granted.

We have the responsibility to stand for the truth, for what is right, DeSantis told the crowd. We also have to protect our people and our kids from some very pernicious ideologies that are trying to be forced upon them all across the country.

According to A.G. Gancarski, a Floridapolitics.com reporter who covered the rally, the governor said the proposal wouldfollow the state board of educations statement supporting the teaching of the Declaration of Independence, and give parents a private right of action to sue districts that implement CRTs bigotry in the classroom.

The parents know best whats going on, and theyre in the best position to do it, DeSantis said, adding that his proposed legislation would defund schools that hire CRT consultants and would prohibit the use of discrimination in school employee trainings. The new law would also allow employees to sue companies that imposed CRT trainings because they are a form of workplace harassment.

The legislation that will be the vehicle for DeSantiss fight against CRT, the Stop W.O.K.E Act, is still being written, and the details will matter. If it includes book-banning language, it will invite the type of attack in the courts (and the court of public opinion) that other state efforts have attracted. That would be a mistake.

But it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. The Florida proposal gets to the heart of the matter that we are facing: Critical race theory is not really an effort to give students a fuller picture of Americas history, warts and all. Its an attempt to destroy Americas identity as a nation constantly striving to live up to the promise of freedom and opportunity, and replace it with an alternative story.

The recognized godfather of CRT, Harvards Derrick Bell, was very clear about the transforming goals of CRT. As I see it, critical race theory recognizes that revolutionizing a culture begins with the radical assessment of it, he wrote in 1995. CRT posits that Americas reigning ideology is white supremacy and that racism in America is systemic, structural and institutional. So, according to this belief, the system itself, the institutions and the structures must be undermined from within.

How the resulting void would be filled is more difficult to ascertain. We know that many of CRTs main architects are Marxists, Marxist sympathizers or critics of capitalism. But Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves were not entirely clear about the ensuing mechanics once capitalism was eliminated. They advocated for the abolition of private property, the family, the free exchange of goods, the nation-state and God himself. But aside from correctly prognosticating that violence would be a must, or that the government would need to make despotic inroads once it actually started taking peoples property away, they were not fulsome with specifics.

All Marx and Engels promised was an earthly utopia, a materialist one. What the practitioners of their ideology have given the world since the first Marxist Revolution triumphed, in Russia in 1917, has been very heavy on despotic inroads and very light on utopian outcomes.

DeSantis, the governor of a state in which many residents are the descendants of victims of communism, or suffered under it themselves, has grasped what is at stake. His movement to grab the leadership of the movement confronting all that makes perfect sense.

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at TheHeritageFoundation. His latest book is BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.

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Taking aim at critical race theory, Ron DeSantis grabs reins of the conservative movement | TheHill - The Hill

Alex (Philippine Velge) and Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) Ian Watson/HBO Max

This week, Station Eleven continues with two new episodes, Rosenkranz and Gildenstern Arent Dead and The Severn City Airport. Paired together, these chapters expand Station Eleven in every direction, introducing us to more characters from the present day and tracing the consequences of their actions 20 years down the road. The miniseries continues to navigate a vast emotional spectrum, somehow everywhere at once without losing its center. The key question these two episodes seem to be posing is: How much of the past do you want in your future?

In Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Arent Dead, the Traveling Symphony returns to Pingtree, an old touring stop where their former director Gil (David Cross, Arrested Development) has settled down. Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) is still shaken by her recent encounter with the mysterious stranger who has attempted to lure her young friend Alex (Philippine Velge) away from the Symphony and, somehow, spouts quotations from the graphic novel Station Eleven. (Kirsten believes she possesses the books only copy.) At Pinetree, she learns that her suspicions about the stranger were well-founded he arrived in town weeks earlier and somehow convinced all of its children to leave with him. He calls himself the Prophet, and he preaches that only post-pans, people born after the pandemic, are free from the corruption of the past and they must leave their families behind. His philosophy seems to be torn directly from the pages of Station Eleven.

As in the previous Year 20 episode, A Hawk from a Handsaw, terror and tragedy serve mostly as bookends to the episode while the meat of the text is dedicated to family drama. Kirsten struggles to protect Alex, her surrogate younger sister, from a dangerous influence, which forces her to flash back to her own contentious relationship with accidental guardian Jeevan during the first year of the flu. Troupe member Wendy (Deborah Cox, First Wives Club) has rewritten Hamlet in the vernacular of the 1990s grunge scene, which Conductor Sara hastily adopts in order to prove the Symphonys relevance to Gil, her former partner. While some of the cast is aghast at the very idea of rewriting the Bard, the production is a hit. Coincidentally, the new staging casts Alex in the leading role for a change, reinforcing her desire to break from the Symphonys cautious routine and set out on her own.

The Prophet tells his followers that there is no before. Its another cryptic phrase cribbed from Station Eleven, whose allure draws the young away from those still haunted by a past they can barely fathom. One can easily imagine why someone would choose to start over rather than carry on the traditions of a dead world. But whatever his means, the episodes chilling finale demonstrates the Prophet is capable of acts of unspeakable evil. The ending of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Arent Dead is by far the darkest moment in the series to date, and its hard to imagine how the Year 20 storyline can recover its hopefulness. Nevertheless, the execution of this episode is absolutely sterling, owed to the deft direction of TV veteran Helen Shaver and writer Nick Cuses delicate management of tone. Despite this grisly twist, Station Eleven still hasnt ventured into misery porn territory.

It helps that this weeks other episode, The Severn City Airport, is the series lightest yet. In this story, former actor Clark Thompson (David Wilmot, The Letter for the King) and about a hundred others become stranded at a Michigan airport terminal as the deadly flu pandemic runs rampant seemingly everywhere else on Earth. By some statistical miracle, no one at the Severn City Airport has brought the disease with them, and after grieving the loss of any loved ones not present, the survivors begin building a new ad-hoc society. Thompson finds purpose here, and charges himself with preserving the best of whats left of the fallen world. The Severn City Airport doesnt forgo suspense and horror elements altogether, but the episode offers a hint of farce as counterbalance.

Like Miranda, the lead of last weeks Hurricane, most of this episodes central characters are tied to the late actor Arthur Leander. Clark was his closest friend and the executor of his will. Arthurs ex-wife Elizabeth (Caitlin FitzGerald, Succession) and young son Tyler (Julian Obradors) arrived at Severn City on the same flight as Clark, redirected en route to Arthurs Chicago funeral. Together with former security guard Miles (Milton Barnes, Utopia Falls), they form a new leading council for the airport, but Tyler isnt entirely onboard with their plans to remain cloistered inside and build a temple to the lost world. Here we can see the beginning of the tug-of-war between past and future that will define the next generation, reverberating all the way into the events of Year 20 and the story of the Traveling Symphony.

When the reality of his situation reaches him, Clark mutters a bit of King Lear to himself: The worst is not, so long as we can say This is the worst. Having a character speak a storys thesis statement aloud (using Shakespeare, no less) could easily play as heavy-handed, but on Station Eleven it resonates as more than a trite aphorism. Here is a line from a play written 400 years ago, by a man who survived a plague of his own. If this piece of the past is worth saving, then surely its not the only one.

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The World of Station Eleven Continues to Expand - Observer

The web3 seems to be the great Internet revolution, with the permission of the Metaverse. Although not even the great gurus of technology are very clear about what it means

Artificial intelligence, metaverse, blockchain, NFT, cryptocurrencies We are initiating one of the most important technological changes in history, although nobody knows very well how important it will be, and how far it will take us.

These days Elon musk Hes been raving about the metaverse, basically because hes an enemy of Mark Zuckerberg. He does not like to wear virtual or augmented reality glasses, but it seems to him very normal that we all implant a chip in our brain

As Business Insider tells us, Elon Musk has been talking about Web3 on Twitter these days. And has joined the conversation company founder Jack Dorsey, who stopped being CEO of Twitter a few weeks ago.

Chromebooks are very simple to use laptops based on the Chrome browser and widely used in academic environments such as schools or institutes.

The two tech gurus get along very well: they share their eccentricism, and their passion for cryptocurrencies. Its one of the reasons why Elon Musk is always on Twitter, and not in other social networks.

A couple of days ago Elon Musk started a debate on Web3 or Web 3.0, which already has more than 5,000 responses.

He started the talk by uploading a famous video of Bill Gates in 1995, it is where he is ridiculed in an interview, for saying that the Internet was the future:

Elon Musk implies that just as they laughed at Bill Gates when he said 25 years ago that the Internet was the future, they also laugh now at those who say that the Web3, the blockchain are the future.

But, What is Web3?

We can consider the early years of the Internet as the web 1.0: a collection of web pages and services that only worked in one direction: users used those services online, and thats it.

The web 2.0 It is the evolution of the Internet where users can personalize these services, create their own, and collaborate with other people on online projects. Something like the collaborative internet.

The next thing will be Web 3.0 or web3, but no one is yet very clear about what it is.

Some speak of the Web 3.0 as an Internet where you access the network without a browser, through multiple devices: wearables, Internet of Things, household appliances, cars, etc.

But Elon Musk calls Web3 to something else: a new decentralized and ownerless Internet, managed by the blockchain. That is, the equivalent of cryptocurrencies, but applied to the management of the Internet.

Can you imagine a video game where you can become a millionaire just by playing? It is possible with NFT games, but all that glitters is not gold

A network in which governments and large corporations such as Google, Amazon, or Facebook, they dont control the data, but are in the power of the users themselves, protected and managed by the blockchain.

In the same thread Elon Musk acknowledges that it is not real yet and wonders what it will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years.

A day later he tried again with another tweet: Has anyone seen Web3? I cant find it.

Answered him Twitter founder Jack Dorsey himself with a coded message: Its somewhere between A and Z:

He was actually referring to TOndreessen Horowitz, one of Facebooks investors, who has shown interest in the Web3.

The founder of Twitter explains in another post that a decentralized website can never escape investors, which always end up keeping everything.

The web3 is a centralized entity with another label , he concludes A response that the defenders of the decentralized Internet have not liked, who claim that he is wrong.

Will cryptocurrencies and blockchain be able to take control of money and the internet from banks, governments, corporations and investors?

It is, surely, the greatest utopia in the entire history of mankind

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What is Web3, the new Internet that confuses Elon Musk and the founder of Twitter | Technology - Central Valley Business Journal

The Golden Globes might have avoided scrutiny if it hadn't made one glaring mistake: It slobbered over "Emily in Paris."

According to a scathing report from the Los Angeles Times, voters were flown into France and pampered on set. They subsequently gave two major nominations to the series, which was panned by many critics, including me.

That, along with the lack of Black representation in its membership, led to NBC dropping coverage of the 2022 award ceremonies and for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to do a major overhaul.

But then something even weirder happened. The more prestigious Academy of Arts & Sciences granted the sitcom an Emmy nomination for outstanding comedy series.

Did I miss something? No. But after watching the entire second season, now streaming on Netflix, I have a better understanding of why certain viewers fell in love.

For those who have avoided the show, a quick recap: Emily (Lily Collins) is a marketing executive who makes the temporary move to France in hopes of fattening up her resume and landing a promotion back home in Chicago.

She winds up spending most of her time abroad wriggling out of one mess after another. It's like Lucy Ricardo's European vacation but without the physical shtick.

"Ever since I moved to Paris, my life has been chaotic and dramatic and complicated," Emily says in one of the new episodes.

For viewers who prefer "The Bachelor" to Marvel movies, this is the ultimate in fantasy TV.

Emily gets to choose among three suitors: an aristocrat who can afford first-class accommodations for a weekend getaway in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera, a gourmet chef and a hottie who looks like the dude from "Bridgerton."

Her wardrobe, which boasts more colors than a bag of Skittles, wouldn't fit into Carrie Bradshaw's closet. Emily snags front-row seats at both fashion shows and male strip clubs. Workdays seem to revolve around martini lunches.

Her best friends are the daughter of one of China's richest tycoons and the heir to a Champagne company. In an upcoming scene, one of those friends ends up singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" aboard a yacht. In another, our hero tools by the Louvre in a Vespa. Ooh la la.

To make the trip even more luxurious, everyone around her seems perfectly willing to speak English.

If you're not swooning, you're not the audience for "Emily." You're also not creator Darren Starr's target audience. As he did with "Melrose Place" and "Sex and the City," Starr has built a Utopia for those who would rather go on high-end shopping sprees than fight alongside the Avengers. The Hollywood elite are not immune to this catnip.

There are some fun twists in the new episodes.

Kate Walsh ("Private Practice") makes a great nemesis when she enters as an executive determined to shake up the French branch of her company. There's also an amusing battle between fashion designers that could have been lifted from "America's Next Top Model."

Collins is seven kinds of adorable, although I can't help wondering what a more adept comic actor like Zooey Deschanel would have done with the role.

But let the "Emily" fans have their fun. Let's just not pretend the show is anything more than candy corn masquerading as a macaron.

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Why so many people love the terrible 'Emily in Paris' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Whether youre a working professional or not, you must have imagined a utopian scenario where you get paid for doing nothing. A cherry on top would be several promotions and salary hikes. Utopia indeed, right? Well, a man was living this utopian life for not one but five years. Heres his story. A Reddit user shared his darkest work secret on the platform and claimed how he was able to keep a data entry job for five years and had to invest the minimum in keeping it. The user got a night-shift data entry job in 2015, where he had to enter details of an order and load it into the companys system. After his training, he figured out that the job could be done with AutoHotkey, an open-source code that works around software automation. The user approached a freelance coder and paid him to design a software that could do all the work that was required to be done by him at the company. It cost me a two-month salary, he wrote.

He added, I just had to input how many orders I want to process per hour. Since day one, I was working from home because the company did not want to pay for transportation or cleaning during the graveyard shift. And this is where the utopia started.

For the first two years of his job, he hardly spent more than five minutes keeping a check on the code and finding out things that the program was unable to do. For the rest of his day, the user spent his time going out for movies, sleeping, or hanging out.

For the adept job the code was doing, he even got a few promotions. I was doing such a remarkable job, I was offered new positions during day time that I would reject stating Im a very introverted person that enjoys this type of position, the user wrote. His colleagues even tried to match his order entering quota but were trumped by the code as the user used to change the quota from, say, 8 to 9, and then from 9 to 11.

As the saying goes, All good things must come to an end, his utopian job, too, ended. The company apparently developed new software that could do the data entry job without any human interference. It was then that the company sent the user a severance package and was told to keep the laptop and other equipment that the company gave him.

Interestingly, in 2017, the user did recommend the company to use the code he got designed by the freelancer, but his regional manager did not pay heed to his suggestions, and said that he was busy dealing with important stuff and that the user should keep doing the good work.

The user, in the end, said, I never talked about that with anybody in real life, not even my family, even my wife wasnt sure what my job was about. Now that it is over, there you go, my darkest work secret.

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.

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This Man Got Promotions, Salary Hikes After Doing Nothing for Five Years - News18

December 23, 2021

December 23, 2021

2021 was full of surprises: The Capitol riot was a bit of a shock; COVID-19variants sprung up left and right; and, perhaps strangest of all, sperm was all over the papers.

That's because the pandemic caused a serious shortage in the market for sperm.Many people have put off having children while COVID runs its course. But among those with male infertility or no male partner,the luxury of working remotely, and the means to pay for some sperm, the pandemic offered a golden opportunity to make dreams of a family a reality. But just as demand skyrocketed, donations fell, and in the resulting shortage, women turned instead to unregulated Facebook groups with nameslike "Sperm Donation USA."The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Esquire all ran features on this growing underground world of sperm philanthropy.

The picture that emerged should give the feminists among us a lot to mull. Artificial insemination by donors is part of a range of assisted reproduction tools that allow people to have children outside the bounds of a heterosexual relationship between two fertile people. It opens up procreative possibilities not only for couples struggling with infertility, but also for women who, for whatever reason, aren't in a committed relationship, as well as lesbian and gay couples.

In other words, sperm donation issupposed to liberate people from traditional gender roles. But the recent spotlight on informal donationpracticessuggests it often does exactly the opposite.

The informal market for sperm differs from its more clinical counterpart. Traditional sperm banks usually keep the personal information of the donor private, at least until the child turns 18. But in the world of Facebook sperm sharing, donors and donees seek each other out, firstonline, then in person.

"Like online dating, the matchmaking kicks off with a direct message from either party expressing interest, before an offline get-to-know-you," wrote Tonya Russell in The Atlantic. And the vetting goes in both directions: Understandably, many donors want assurance that the person raising their biological child has the meansand temperamentto raise them well.

This produces a variety of unconventional arrangements. Some donors, Russell reported, refuse to donate "artificially" and arrange meet-ups to donate the old-fashioned way. In many cases, donors maintainsome sort ofrelationship with the children they sire, or at least hope their children will reach out to them in the future, establishing them as what researcher Nicole Bergen refers to as an "estranged patriarch."

"I have this vision of me being in my 50s and 60s, and I have a large dinner table, and I'm inviting all my donor kids to join me for dinner to tell me their stories, their journeys," one popular 30-year-old donor told The New York Times.

Arguably the most famous of these estranged-patriarchs-in-the-making is Ari Nagel, who has fathered nearly 100 children through word-of-mouth sperm donation. Nagel is a strange figure who stays in loose contact with many of the women he's impregnated, as well as with their children. PerEsquire's sweeping profile, the women are friendly with each other, referring to each other's children as nieces and nephews and to themselves as "Ari's baby mamas."

To his offspring, Nagel plays a kind of distant father figure, swooping in for trips to the park while he's in town to catch another woman's fertile window. He reminds me a little of Stiva Oblonsky from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina,a charming father of six who flits in and out of his childrens' lives but is otherwise entirely unencumbered by their needs, socializing and drinking and philandering as he pleases.

And that similarity is revealing: The novel is set in imperial Russia in the 1800s, a country still under the feudal system. Central characters have a serious discussion about whether women ought to be educated. It is not a feminist utopia and maybe sperm donation patriarchy isn't either.

After all,the arrangement Nagel has with his baby mamas is arguably not just regressive butantediluvian. The imbalance of parental responsibility ismore extreme than any 1950s gender stereotype. Nagel gets to enjoy casual relationships with dozens of children, and his "baby mamas" do literally all of the work of providing for their wellbeing.

Even if we step back from an extreme example like Nagel, the population of people raising children afterassisted reproduction is overwhelmingly feminine. There's no reliable data on exactly how many children are conceived by donor sperm each year, but according to the Timesreport, sperm banks report about 20 percent of their clients are heterosexual couples, while the rest are gay women or single moms by choice.

The population of men who adopt children or have them through surrogacy doesn't come close to counterbalancing this distribution which makes sense, as even a $1000 vial of sperm is much less expensive than a $30,000 adoption or $100,000 surrogacy. That's part of why the vast majority of same-sex couples raising children are female, as are thevast majority of single parents, whether they're single by choice or not.

All told, artificial means of becoming parents seem to be upholding, rather than dismantling, a gendered division of aggregate reproductive labor.

Whether or notthat matters to youwill depend not only on whether you care about gender equality, but what your vision of gender equality looks like. Does achieving parity in domestic labor matter? What about parity in reproduction, insofar as that's possible? Or should women pursue reproduction, including reproduction without male responsibility, guided by what they personally want instead of loyalty to some abstract principle of equality?

Feminism doesn't have a single answer to any of these questions, nor can I answer them here.Some feminists, like Robyn Rowland, fear the commodification of reproductionas a threat to women's self-determination over their bodies, even going so far as to say that women struggling with infertility should forgo the use of these technologies for the sake of women "as a social group." Others, such as Rosalind Petchesky, countered that, far from being imposed on women, reproductive technology is "a critical tool of reproductive freedom."Shulamith Firestone also saw liberation in reproductive technology, but,believing childbearing was the root cause of women's societal oppression, arguedtrue equality would only be achievedif it was used tofree women from their biologically-imposed reproductive burden.

Whatever else comes out of the sperm donation boom within the COVID baby bust, it may be some clarity on these points. This year and into the next, unknown thousands of babies whose conception began in the comment threads of "Sperm Donation USA" will be born. And, two decades hence, they'll be uniquely positioned to tell us: Is the new estranged patriarch any less oppressive than the old?

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Is sperm donation good for feminism? - The Week Magazine