At The Nation, Richard Kim remembers the first gay bar he went to, and notes that the Pulse, the Orlando gay club where a gunman killed fifty people and wounded at least fifty more this weekend, was a “utopia” and a “safe haven”—qualities that he fervently hopes will not go away: “To all the bartenders and bar-backs and bouncers and gogo boys and drag queens and club kids and freaks who make the nightlife—I love you. Stay strong.”
This weekend, novelist Jennifer Weiner, the author of Good in Bed and other bestsellers, describes going to her college reunion at Princeton expecting her former classmates to scorn her as a writer of “beach books.” When this didn’t happen, she came to a new conclusion about gender inequality in publishing and film. “Maybe what’s behind the inequity isn’t just a lack of opportunity, but a lack of confidence, an inability among women, or just me, to step up and say My work matters, and to really, truly believe it.” At the Huffington Post, the author Lev Raphael raises an eyebrow at this realization, pointing out: “Whatever people say about her books and however much she gripes about being dissed, Jennifer Weiner is in the publishing world’s 1%. She’s wealthy and famous, but she’s not satisfied. I guess she wants to be treated like Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates? Who wouldn’t?”
“Americans are always saying things about Americans—they’re fat or intellectually lazy or materialistic or whatever. One of my regrets in life is that I ever paid attention to any of this. There are more than 300 million of us, after all, and as heterogeneous a population as has ever existed anywhere.” Novelist Marilynne Robinson reflects on the difficulties of democracy, neuroscience, and more at Bookriot.
Facing the $140 million invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought on by Hulk Hogan (with assistance from Peter Thiel), Gawker has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and put itself up for sale. But Politico has offered a number of reasons why we shouldn’t assume that this is the end for the media company. Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America—the union to which Gawker Media’s editorial staff belongs—has issued a petition requesting that Facebook remove Thiel from its board of directors.
Novelist Roxane Gay has written a column about anger—particularly who gets to express it (and who doesn’t). “Hillary Clinton is not allowed to be angry though certainly some of her supporters are. Mrs. Clinton, once again, has shown how the rules are different for women,” Gay points out. “She cannot raise her voice without reprisal.”