The Mama Bear by Chairman Mom

Guess what? Not only have we picked dates for next year’s Chairman Mom Flee, but we’ve sold around 50 tickets and already have an amazing roster of speakers locked and loaded.

I’ve never worked this far ahead on anything in my life. I am the queen of not doing things until the absolutely need to be done. And none of this really needs to be done a year out. This time last year, we didn’t even know we were doing an event.

But those four days in Pulga meant so much to me and to so many of you, that I couldn’t wait to start working on year two and find ways to make it even better. Rather than belabor intro after intro of all the speakers we’ve signed up, I figured I’d throw it all in one intro. Read more...

I started doing my podcast “A Uterus Is a Feature Not a Bug” years ago as I was starting work on my book by the same name. We’ve interviewed so many amazing amazing women on the show, talking about their lives, their kids, their “good mom” and “bad mom” moments. I made a ton of money to help support the research for my book, thanks to my Patrons. And tens of thousands of women listened and somehow found these episodes.

But I’m a little bored with the format. What I love right now about Chairman Mom isn’t getting in a studio with one awesome woman, it’s connecting with thousands of them. The highlight of my last week has been this thread on Fall Wardrobe Staples. I’m hosting a Chairman Mom Flee reunion at my house barely a month after the event because I miss everyone so much. Read more...

I’m so sick of people feeling sorry for men right now.

I can’t even get into the topic of the lawsuit against Moira Donegan without my blood pressure shooting through the roof. I made the mistake of reading this over the weekend. It was the typical NYT, “let’s get into the head of a misogynist…” piece about Stephen Elliot’s lawsuit: “‘I really feel like I’m happy for the first time since this started,’ [Elliot] said. ‘I have a politics. I know who my friends are.’

What are those politics? ‘I still think of myself as a liberal,’ he said. ‘But the left moved away from liberalism and I hadn’t realized that yet. If you are a liberal, by definition, you believe that it’s better to let a certain amount of guilty people go free than to jail one innocent man. That’s almost the definition of liberalism. These people on the left aren’t liberals at all, actually. What I’ve come to realize is how close they are to the people on the right.’” Read more...

Kali is a Hindu goddess. She is the divine mother, worshipped by different sects as “the ultimate reality,” “divine protector,” and one who bestows “liberation.” Her name also shares the meaning of “the fullness of time.”

As far as I’m concerned, it might as well mean “revenge in the midterms.”

She first appears not giving birth, drinking pumpkin spice lattes, or doing anything domestic or innocuous. But as “a destroyer of evil forces.”

There is nothing feel good about Kali. She’s depicted as black or blue in Indian art, her eyes red “with intoxication and in absolute rage,” her hair is disheveled, and she frequently has small fangs. Sometimes she’s shown wearing a shirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads. Read more...

Content warning: This post discusses and describes sexual assault.

Last weekend I got a devastating email from my friend and fellow founder/CEO Esther Crawford. After nearly 17 years of silence and weeks watching loved ones dismiss Christine Blasey Ford’s story, she finally felt she needed to come forward and talk about the sexual assault she experienced in college…one that she had never share the full details about before.

Part of what’s moving in her post—and so many others like it—is the clear-eyed memory of what happened, who did it, and an easy-to-understand rationale for why she has stayed silent for so long. Easy to understand unless there’s a biased reason you don’t want to, that is. Read more...

Last week, Ellen Pao wrote the piece on California’s new law that requires companies to include women on their boards that I’ve been waiting for.

The money graphs: “But even more important, it sends a strong message to the whopping 71 percent of start-ups across the globe with all-male boards and to private tech companies, where 74 percent of boards are all-male and 93 percent of board seats are held by men: Change now before it’s too late — before you get regulated and before you must scramble for a more diverse board.” Read more...

We’ve always taken anonymity and privacy very seriously on Chairman Mom. Our anonymous feature, in particular, was designed to be so strong that even we don’t know who you are when you select it.

The only downside to such strong anonymity is it limits the functionality we can bring you. We can’t—for instance—send you @-notifications or alerts when someone has answered your question because…we don’t know who you are. It also means you can’t edit an anonymous question when it’s posted. Read more...

I’m so F****** angry about this Kavanaugh situation. Overwhelming polls show that the public doesn’t support him. More than a thousand law professors say he’s unfit. Overwhelmingly more people in this country believe Christine Blasey Ford and not Brett Kavanaugh.

And yet.

Looks like the aptly named Jeff Flake is flaking and the cool girls of the Senate are getting back in party line. Michele Dauber, the force who lead the fight to recall Aaron Perksy, said this at our retreat last week: This investigation was just theatre, the vote would still be the same. Read more...

In the enthusiasm over movies that celebrate and elevate strong characters of diverse gender and race right now, Assassination Nation stands out as a movie that underperformed expectations. Its reviews—both viewers and critics—has been decidedly mixed.

I saw it Sunday night, after re-entering reality and the news and social media and my cell phone after four idyllic off the grid at our women’s only retreat. It was…a lot to handle on top of a country that saw an entirely credible witness talking about sexual assault and still looks likely to name the alleged predator to the Supreme Court. Oh, and a country led by a man who would later mock that credibly survivor for political entertainment. Read more...

I am not going to bury this insanely great deal: Sallie Krawcheck is giving everyone $100 free to start investing in yourself. Go here to take advantage of it! DO IT RIGHT NOW!

You don’t have to have attended the retreat, you don’t have to be a paying Chairman Mom subscriber, you can just be a Mama Bear newsletter lurker, or a friend of a Mama Bear newsletter lurker. Sallie and I both want as many women as possible to start investing in their future right now.

Because money is power.

Michele Dauber—go here to check out her PAC that helps make violence against women a voting issue—would agree. The more money we have, the more we can give to candidates. And then women’s issues finally become the political issues that matter. Read more...