Diana Bellonby

Epstein Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg: The Trump Protection Machine and the Epidemic of Violence Against Women On July 2, the jury delivered a guilty verdict on some of the charges against music mogul Sean Combs for his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women with the help of his extensive staff and deep poc...

"One reason this violence is so unacknowledged is that it is in the most literal sense not news – there are tides of hatred and violence against other groups that ebb and flow, but violence against women is global and enduring, a constant rather than an event."

As Epstein is back up in the news, reminder:

-1 in 9 girls* &
-1 in 20 boys* under the age of 18 experience SA

-Female ppl* aged 16-19 are 4x more likely than the general population to be victims of SA or attempted SA

Some of those survivors read your skeets.

*& presumably nonbinary & gnc ppl

He casually shared stories about Julia Child, Howard Johnson, and Robert Mondavi. He winced from back pain, but kept trying to push past it. He proudly showed me a picture of his lovely granddaughter Shorey. He misses his beloved wife Gloria. He was equal parts charming and inquisitive. What a gem!

I learned that he doesn’t much like bell peppers. He moved from NYC to CT to be by the water. He wanted his 2022 book, Art of the Chicken, to be composed solely of his paintings (which are amazing), but his editors insisted that he add recipes and stories.

Summer highlight: partying w Jacques Pépin, who has a new book coming out in Sept. As we perused his memoir, he joked that it'd make me fall asleep. We chatted about Victorian Gaslighting and my memoir. He issued judgments on food and wine gently, never imperiously. This man is a national treasure.

This is #BookHistory too. Of a heartbreaking kind.
Tho' I imagine they haven't succeeded in accessing ICE detention facilities, this seems a good time to remind people to support the Prison Book Program (prisonbookprogram.org), which does amazing work compensating for the cruelties Öztürk describes

Writing on Fire - Broadview Press Writing on Fire -

My textbook is finally available! 'Writing on Fire: A Fierce Yet Friendly Guide to Writing Humanities Essays in College.' There are chapters on close reading, thesis statements, all the good stuff. If you teach writing via a humanities subject, check it out! broadviewpress.com/product/writ...

There is something particularly unsettling about seeing a corpse: the absence of the person who was once there is so conspicuous that it makes the body uncanny. That the body is not the person becomes clear the moment you see a body without a human person in it. And yet the body is the instrument and vessel of the person who animates it, and as such it commands to be treated with dignity, with a kind of reverence, with the respect you would give to a human being. Abortion bans disregard this: they appropriate the body for the ends of the state, indifferent to the will or the dignity of the person who lives in it. Rape functions this way, too – using a body for an end, without deferring to the person who inhabits it. In both cases – rape and abortion bans – the body of a living person is reduced to an instrument for someone else’s use. That contrast – between the dignity that a human being’s body demands and the instrumentalization with which it is treated – is what supplies abortion bans and sexual violence with their moral horror. They treat living people as mere objects. In that sense, a corpse might be the perfect vehicle for the anti-abortion movement’s agenda: it is a female instrument without the annoying encumbrance of a female person.

I wrote about Adriana Smith, the Georgia woman whose corpse was used to incubate a fetus, and the moral horror of seeing a human body treated as a instrument for the agendas of people more powerful than the woman who inhabited it. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

XVII. Post-op ; or, Three Months of Trauma Plot + A Tour

Jamie Hood is coming to Philly Aug 26th! #traumaplot

I clicked on the link thinking this was an article in The Onion! Unreal.

Yep. These villains even appear *proud* of their unskilled, unoriginal evildoing.

Small Ships in Big Waters: How Indie Publishers Navigate the World Europa Editions and New Directions from the U.S., as well as publishers from Brazil and Uruguay, discussed the advantages and opportunities of working free from corporate demands at a day-long seminar...

Re the Q of “brands” & reading cultural production institutionally: there was a fascinating write-up in PW abt an Apr panel of indie publishers arguing that small/indie presses have MORE “brand” ID/recognition than big corp publishers and I’d agree—re UPs too www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Anti-Anti-Rape On the #MeToo Backlash

"We’re in a frightening moment: cultural dismissals of #MeToo are of course inseverable from coordinated assaults on contraception and abortion, on anti-AIDS activism, on transition-related health care, and on the rights of sex workers and other laborers." -Jamie Hood

Opened my laptop and found a surprise from my daughter.

Can't wait to read this! Ordered a copy elsewhere, as The Strand is out of stock (go you!).

How you feel about Meghan Markle + how you feel about Zohran Mamdani tells me all I need to know about you.

Cannot believe the Democratic Party STILL has not figured out that the reason Trump keeps winning and Republicans keep sticking with him is that he is GIVING THEM WHAT THEY WANT. How about Dems offering to give their base what they want? Especially since what we want is actually good for everyone?

I'm one of the people studying it! That is, the history behind this kind of structural gaslighting. No one loves being gaslit, but anyone who buys Trump's lies DOES love the patriarchal, white-supremacist fantasies behind his gaslighting. They desperately want his false stories to be true.

Yes to Iffy Books! I'd also say go to the Museum of Illusions if you're short on time but in the mini museum mood.

Trump is such a gaslighter, and some people just love being gaslit by him.

People will study this for centuries

Can’t wait to read this book!

all the worst people are sad tonight and i just think thats neat

There’s just so much: the victory of a new political talent, the loss of an old tyrant, the possibilities of alliance & positive strategizing, the hope for a more just future, the cracking of the last generation’s stranglehold on power. Also the joy and force of Tish James! Listen to her voice!

This is inspiring. Go you!

Thank you (from Philly)!

There are so many reasons to be afraid, I can't keep track of them all.

I’m still not over the fact that there was an extremely popular award-winning movie over a decade ago about the perils of falling in love with a chatbot and a company decided to make the chatbot in the image of the movie’s chatbot and now quite a few people have decided to date it

Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation

And in more book news, my book on affect theory and sensation fiction is now out in paperback: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-narrati...

I am literally publishing a book on Victorian gaslighting edited by the fab @tara-macdonald.bsky.social @dbellonby.bsky.social and @noragilbert.bsky.social and I will NOT be gaslit by the New Yorker into believing reading is or ought to be on its way out because of AI

Juneteenth went uncelebrated by the White House. That alone says everything you need to know about this regime.