I honestly always find the term ‘spinster’ as referring to an elderly, never-married woman as funny because you know what?
Wool was a huge industry in Europe in the middle ages. It was hugely in demand, particularly broadcloth, and was a valuable trade good. A great deal of wool was owned by monasteries and landed gentry who owned the land.
And, well, the only way to spin wool into yarn to make broadcloth was by hand.
This was viewed as a feminine occupation, and below the dignity of the monks and male gentry that largely ran the trade.
So what did they do?
They hired women to spin it. And, turns out, this was a stable job that paid very well. Well enough that it was one of the few viable economic options considered ‘respectable’ outside of marriage for a woman. A spinster could earn quite a tidy salary for her art, and maintain full control over her own money, no husband required.
So, naturally, women who had little interest in marriage or men? Grabbed this opportunity with both hands and ran with it. Of course, most people didn’t get this, because All Women Want Is Husbands, Right?
So when people say ‘spinster’ as in ‘spinster aunt’, they are TRYING to conjure up an image of a little old lady who is lonely and bitter.
But what I HEAR are the smiles and laughter of a million women as they earned their own money in their own homes and controlled their own fortunes and lived life on their own terms, and damn what society expected of them.
Just wanted to add that the suffix -ster was originally specifically feminine, a means of denoting a lady known by her profession. Spinster = female spinner, baxter = female baker, webster = female weaver (webber), brewster = female brewer. If one of the ladies named Alys in your village was known for selling her excellent weaving, you might call her Alys Webster (to differentiate her from, say, Alys Littel who was rather short, and Alys Bywater who lived near the pond).
This fascinates me for many reasons, but especially in the case of modern families with last names like Baxter or Webster or Brewster. What formidable and well-known ancestresses managed to pass on those very gendered names to all their descendants, when last names were changing from personal “nicknames” into indicators of lineage among the middle and lower classes? There’s a forgotten story of a fascinating woman behind every one of those family lines.
Resource for the history of the -ster suffix here.
my fav quote by freud is definitely the one where hes writing to his fiancee and hes like im gonna make you eat so much you are just a little weak baby and im a big cokehead
best advice i ever got as a writer was to pick a hobby that i hated more than writing and stick with it. i’m a runner now and it’s miserable and i Hate It and writing is so lovely in comparison. bonus: i’m in excellent shape and running gives you a lot of time to think about writing. i’ve solved a lot of plot complications while running.
can we talk about the ups strike can we PLEASE talk about the ups strike
i know since writers and actors are already striking thats gonna take up most of the news space on social media but like. ups has until july 31st to meet the teamster’s demands and if not then theyre going on the biggest strike against a single corporation since the early 1900s. the uaw (auto manufacturers union) contract is up this fall, and i believe the alu (amazon labor union) is as well. there’s a huge possibility that they might strike as well, depending on how long the ups strike lasts.
im seeing a lot of talk about hollywood going down but i want to see more talk about labor rights and working class solidarity across the board… like A Lot of shit is about to go down
we’re about to see a lot more propaganda by more than just hollywood, we’re about to see a lot of bullshit political moves on local, state, and federal levels. dont fall for it. workers have power.
your favorite youtubers and content creators are about to be offered some tantalizing tv/streaming deals so we’re all about to find out who the real working class allys are
someone’s gonna get cancelled doing this and they’re gonna cry crocodile tears over how difficult it is to make a living as a content creator and i’m telling you right now we are NOT going to buy it, got it? scabs deserve no sympathy
If I had any game programming knowledge whatsoever, my dream project would be a cyberpunk Pokemon parody where the dystopic supercorporation that runs the world accidentally unleashes hordes of cute, marketable bioweapons into the wild, and then spins a narrative that this was totally intentional and creates a cultural movement to catch ‘em all, thereby outsourcing the cleanup effort to consumers and still turning a profit.
The main character is a twenty-something burnout who decides to become a monster catcher basically because it beats retail.
As the game progresses, you can join one of two factions. You can either get sponsorship from the corporation and become a professional monster catcher, streaming your monster catching sessions and get increased funding and donations, or you can side with a band of activists who rightfully see this whole thing as an ecological disaster of biblical proportions.
everyone gather around. I want to introduce you guys to my new favorite pokemon move. it can only be learned by 6 pokemon total, can only used in double or triple battles, and also does absolutely nothing
Hold Hands has no effect in battle. When a Pokémon uses this move in a Double Battle or Triple Battle, it and its target ally will perform a brief animation together.
It was kind of interesting to me that out of all the people in our training group, the ones that were the quickest to form social bonds were the people from way out in the country and the city people just kind of quietly kept to themselves.
But I was definitely accepted as one of the bumpkins.
Oh! This is actually an example of Rural vs Urban manners.
In rural/less densely populated areas, the polite thing is to offer people your time and social energy which is why country people will talk your ear off at the slightest acquaintence- it’s kind of lonely when you have to make an effort to see people, so you Make An Effort ™
In Urban/Densely populated areas, you’re meeting people whether you want to or not, because you are physically close to each other constantly. So the Polite Thing there is to kind of ignore other people and keep strictly to business, so you’re not imposing upon thier (probably already drained) soical spoons.
The city folks will warm right up to you once they get to know you well enough to know that talking to you won’t piss you off.
I grew up rural and live in the SF Bay Area now, and this is exactly how it is.
Appropriate city behavior is about *efficiency*, creating the least friction possible in every interaction because everyone has somewhere to be and is trying to pretend they don’t have strangers in their personal bubble *all day long*.
In SF, chatting with the bank teller a second longer than necessary is rude AF because there are 10 people in line and the teller is running behind and you are inconviencing *everyone*. They will deal with 1000 customers today and they genuinely don’t have it in them to form a friendly relationship with you.
In the little forest where I grew up you could stop your car in the middle of a one lane street to chat up a friend on the sidewalk. Any other cars would just go around you. There wasn’t much traffic, it was fine. If you’re one of 50 people the bank teller is gonna see today and there’s no line, it’s actually nice to ask how their day has been and commiserate about the roadwork at the single downtown traffic light.
City & country folks are operating under very different pressures and both are “right”, but it can be hard for city people to remember how to just…shoot the shit with strangers.
