Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 299

Uber for Breakups

The prices, it should be said, are quite reasonable.

For $10, you can buy a text sent to your significant other informing him or her of the cessation of your affection. For the same amount, you can buy an email version of that note. For slightly more—$20—you can buy, if you are feeling traditional or especially official about it, an actual letter announcing the breakup. Custom missives will run you a little more: $30 for a letter that features names, explanations, and other details that will help to drive home the facts that 1) this is over, and 2) this is not a joke.

It is, to be clear, totally not a joke. These breakup offerings are offered by the new service The Breakup Shop. Which is an actual thing. And which is exactly what it says it is:

The homepage of breakupshop.com

The items for sale on the site, however, include not just writing-based notices. If you’re feeling like your text and/or email and/or letter might leave room for understandable and actually probably inevitable confusion on the part of their recipient, you can also hire a breakup phone call, placed at the time of your choosing. (It’ll cost you $29, with prices increasing for rush orders.)

That call will be made, at this early point in The Breakup Shop’s history, by one of The Breakup Shop’s two founders.

It will include select details, provided by the breaker-upper, of what the break-up-ee has done to be broken up with.

It will also include, at the end of the proceedings, an offer for the freshly dumped individual to visit The Breakup Shop’s online gift emporium, which includes such time-tested sadness solutions as a Blu-Ray of The Notebook ($25), a set of two 18-oz. wine glasses ($15), and a box of Chips Ahoy! Rainbow Cookies ($5).

We know all this because the Motherboard writer Emanuel Maiberg recently tested the service out on his girlfriend of five years, arranging for a breakup call that cited for its existence, among other deal-breaking flaws, her love of makeup and her distaste for helping out in the kitchen. (The call was, fortunately, an actual test: Maiberg warned her in advance that the call was coming, and the breakup was enacted for stunt purposes only.)

And: The results of the breakup call were just as awkward as even more awkward than you’d expect. The Breakup Caller paused at inopportune moments. He dutifully cited the reasons for the breakup, clearly reading from a list. He suggested, at the end, that the dumpee take solace in that online gift shop. The whole thing was terrible and horrible and haunting on pretty much every level imaginable.

The Breakup Shop may be efficient and, to a degree, even useful. But: Is it a system fit for humans?

So. Yes. Anyway. Here is the argument for the existence of a service like The Breakup Shop: Closure. The avoidance of the confusion and the anxiety that can come when an official breakup is skipped in favor of a drawn-out process of ghosting. MacKenzie, one of the founders of the service, in fact got the idea for The Breakup Shop when he was ghosted upon by a girl he was seeing casually: Rather than telling him that they were done, she simply cut off communication with him. And “the least you can do is break up with someone and give them that closure,” Evan, The Breakup Shop’s other founder, noted. Which is extremely true.

But, then, here are the arguments against a service like The Breakup Shop: Empathy. Human decency. The fact that your mom raised you so much better than this.

And the fact, too, that this is probably not the kind of thing we, as a society, want to do with our new technologies. Last week, in an essay for The Atlantic, Robin Sloan argued against the sometimes dehumanizing efficiencies that the app economy is bringing about. “We are alive,” he wrote, “at a time when huge systems—industrial, infrastructural—are being remade, and I think it’s our responsibility as we make choices both commercial and civic—it’s just a light responsibility, don’t stress—to extrapolate forward, and ask ourselves: Is this a system I want to live inside? Is this a system fit for humans?”

The Breakup Shop may be efficient and, to a degree, even useful. But: Is it a system fit for humans?

It’s revealing that the cofounders of The Breakup Shop—MacKenzie and Evan, who are brothers, based in Canada—offer many, many justifications for their service. It’s even more revealing, though, that they asked Maiberg not to share their full names with his readers. They wanted, they explained—though, really, no explanation was necessary—“to protect their identity.”

An ISIS Recruiting Ring in Europe

On Thursday, while Kurdish troops were launching an American-backed offensive against ISIS to deprive the terrorist group of territory in northern Iraq, European security forces reportedly launched a raid to deprive the Islamic State of recruits.

More than a dozen people were arrested in four European countries in a coordinated sweep that stemmed from a four-year-long investigation into an ISIS-linked group called Rawti Shax. “This is the most important international police operation in Europe in 20 years,” Giuseppe Governale, Italy’s anti-terrorism chief, said at a press conference in Rome.

Officials accuse the men of successfully recruiting at least five Europeans to travel to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS and seeking to recruit others to do the same. The men were also thought to be involved in a plot kill or kidnap European diplomats in an effort to free Rawti Shax’s leader, Mullah Kreka, a cleric who is in prison in Norway.

The geographic scope of the countries involved is staggering: Arrests were made in Great Britain, Finland, Norway, and Italy. Nearly all of the 17 men for whom arrest warrants were issued are Kurdish Sunnis. It’s unclear how many men were actually arrested in total on Thursday—figures from Italian and Eurojust officials differ slightly.

The arrests also come as ISIS reportedly threatens to launch attacks inside of Russia for its airstrikes against the group—and others—in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad. Russia is not officially part of the U.S.-led, anti-Assad coalition that is conducting airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria.

According to the monitoring group SITE, ISIS released a Russian-language video on Thursday promising that, “Soon, very soon, the blood will spill like an ocean” in Russia. As we noted earlier, last week ISIS took responsibility for the bombing of Russian airliner that killed more than 200 tourists in Egypt late last month. Those claims haven’t been independently confirmed.

Twin Explosions in Beirut

Updated on November 12 at 1:53 p.m. ET

Dozens of people are dead and more than 100 wounded after two explosions in the Shiite neighborhood of Burj al-Barajneh.

The Daily Star newspaper and the state-run National News Agency reported that 37 people were killed and 180 wounded. Al-Arabiya put it at 40.

The neighborhood is a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, and Al-Arabiya reported the blasts occurred near a hospital run by the group. The Daily Star said the explosions were set off by suicide bombers.

Lebanon is no stranger to conflict. Its 15-year-long civil war ended in 1990, but the tiny country has often found itself overwhelmed by its larger neighbors, Syria and Israel, as well as by Hezbollah’s powerful military presence within the country.

Adding to the complication, Hezbollah fighters are now in Syria fighting the predominantly Sunni Islamic State on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Lebanese government has declared Friday to be a day of mourning.

Joy to the World, Missy Elliott Is Here

After some time away, Missy Elliott still knows what people want from her. The video for her new song “WTF” opens with the muffled sound of its beat and words coming through headphones and car speakers and nail salon stereos around New York City, with citizens of all sorts mouthing the words and bopping their heads and sticking out their tongues. As has been previously established by the Missy Elliott canon, music makes you lose control, and Missy’s “you” is inclusive as it gets.

That the foul-mouthed trailblazer with alien beats who’s one of the few women to ever successfully compete in the male-dominated rap world would be such a uniter might seem, on paper, a little bizarre. But her absence from the musical landscape—her last album came out in 2005, followed by a few one-off songs—has made it clear just how influential and uniquely easy-to-love she was. Timbaland’s clattering production style has seeped all over, and Nicki Minaj, Azealia Banks, and Iggy Azalea have made the female-rapper lane a little less lonely than it once was. But no one is as reliably able and willing to start a party as Missy has been on her best singles. She’s not buying melodies from Swedish pop geniuses in attempts to conquer multiple radio formats; she’s not lugging around a Narrative. She’s pure rhythm + attitude,  an equation for joy.

So it is on “WTF,” with its earthquaking low end and catchiness-through-elongated-syllables. Pharrell, another rap-master of body music, shows up for a verse that fits nicely into the nonsensical tapestry.

Well, semi-nonsensical. The lyrics aren’t quite as meaningless as the title would first suggest—the WTF here is not what the fuck, but “Where they from?” She’s rapping about dancing as sex as performance as rap, of course, as always. My favorite line on first spin: “Body be thick like a bisque.” The big question, for each listener, is how do they do it where you’re from?

Even when it sounds like she’s delivering a diss, the dance styles on display in the video suggest that basically any answer is acceptable, as long as it’s fun—no airquotes, irony, and pain like 2015’s last trendy GIF buffet/music video. In a mirror suit, as a puppet, wearing trash bags, face painted, whatever; Missy’s back to entertain, thank goodness.

‘Political Correctness’ Won’t Ruin H.P. Lovecraft’s Legacy

At the very first World Fantasy Convention in 1975, the theme was “The Lovecraft Circle.” The guest of honor, toastmaster, chairman, and judges were esteemed members of the speculative-fiction community who all also happened to be white men. Judging by appearances, not much has changed on this front, but a decision announced at this year’s convention on Sunday suggests a shift is under way. Starting next year, the World Fantasy Award trophy will no longer be modeled after the massively influential horror-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft.

The convention organizers didn’t offer a reason for the change, nor did they name a replacement, but the decision is notable nonetheless. Lovecraft’s rise to fame happened largely after his death, but as he received more attention, so too did his racist and xenophobic beliefs. His disassociation from the WFC after 40 years feels in line with a growing inclusiveness in the science-fiction and fantasy community of women and people of color. The author Daniel José Older, who started a petition last year to replace Lovecraft with Octavia Butler, praised the decision. “Writers of color have always had to struggle with the question of how to love a genre that seems so intent on proving it doesn’t love us back,” he said. “We raised our voices collectively, en masse, and the World Fantasy folks heard us.”

Not everyone agreed with this sentiment. In a letter to the co-chair of the WFC board, the Lovecraft biographer and author S.T. Joshi called the decision “a craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness.” He argued that using the writer’s image on the award was simply an acknowledgment of the impact his work had on the genre—not an endorsement of his personal beliefs. He also noted that “social-justice warriors” haven’t aimed their ire equally at awards named after Bram Stoker or John W. Campbell Jr.

On some level, Joshi’s frustration is understandable. The nebulous field of weird fiction wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t imbued with the spirit of Lovecraft’s strange, dark creations. And the question of how much to separate a cultural figure from his or her personal beliefs has always been an uneasy one. But Joshi’s claims are myopic. Lovecraft’s removal is about more than just the writer himself; it’s not an indictment of his entire oeuvre. The change is symbolic but powerful—it’s a message to the next generation of writers, artists, and editors that they belong in the genre of science fiction and fantasy.

The symbolism of the WFA’s trophy for the last 40 years has inevitably meant that some recipients, like Sofia Samatar and Nnedi Okorafor, were expected to feel honored by an object shaped like a man who thought of them as lesser. After winning an award, Okorafor was horrified to learn that Lovecraft had written a poem called “On the Creation of Niggers.” (Sample lines: “A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure / Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.”) Another recipient of the award, China Miéville, has said he feels honored by it but keeps the physical statuette facing away from him. He views his continued work as an act of defiance of the genre’s past.

Small, corrective steps matter, not for the past, but for the future.

So what of various other writers and filmmakers and artists in the canon who held repulsive views or did disgusting things? Is it hypocritical, as Joshi says, to focus on Lovecraft in particular? Is Lovecraft’s legacy being unfairly tarnished thanks to the “shrill whining of a handful of social-justice warriors”? To be sure, history is filled with revered men (and women) who deserve scorn for their bigotry, or sexism, or homophobia—it would be impossible to scrub them from history. Nor should that be the end goal. Which means, as Okorafor wrote, that “this is something people of color, women, minorities must deal with more than most when striving to be the greatest that they can be in the arts: the fact that many of The Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us.”

It’s far easier to lobby a group of (apparently) sympathetic convention-board members for a symbolic change than it is to magically enact systemic reform in an entire genre, let alone throughout the literary world. Today, 89 percent of those working in publishing are white, and the vast majority of literary criticism focuses on works written by white authors. Against this backdrop, small, corrective steps matter, not for the past, but for the future. In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who’ve never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman. But the convention organizers’ move means that the talented writers of color who break through, against the odds, will feel a little more emboldened as they go forward and create new worlds.

Why Would People Watch Shia LaBeouf Watch Himself?

It’s unfortunately easy to laugh at Shia LaBeouf’s latest introspective project. For #ALLMYMOVIES, created with the artists Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö, the actor is sitting in a movie theater (New York’s Angelika), munching on a bag of popcorn, and watching every film he’s ever appeared in, screened in reverse chronological order. The event is open and free to the public; anyone can come in, and, if they have the interest, sit next to LaBeouf and watch him take in his own work. If not, there’s a live-stream of his face broadcast online.

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The Messed-Up Ways People Talk About Shia LaBeouf's Alleged Rape

LaBeouf was one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars for four years after a long career playing plucky kids and smart-aleck teenagers, before he spiraled into typical bad-boy behavior (DUI arrests, charges of assault, and disorderly conduct). He then bounced into stranger territory which many categorized as performance art (wearing paper bags over his head, plagiarizing other writers and tweeting about it). Sometimes his conduct feels like a funhouse-mirror version of James Franco’s own pretentious antics; sometimes it feels like a genuine cry for help. It’s hard to know just why LaBeouf thinks so many people are interested in his tortured life, but with #ALLMYMOVIES, he’s at least returned his focus to his cinematic oeuvre—and with that, he might be on to something.

Let’s start with the simplest argument: #ALLMYMOVIES is free cinema for the people. All you have to do is line up at the Angelika to get a seat to see some movies at no charge. (It’s also arguably a more populist effort than J.K. Rowling’s theatrical sequel to her Harry Potter series.) LaBeouf could be subjecting the public to an installation of his own creation, but instead he’s recognized the main vehicle of his success and is paying (bizarre) homage to it. LaBeouf’s filmography is full of hidden gems, and on a larger scope, tells a tale of an unusual track to Hollywood stardom.

LaBeouf is that rare beast—a child star who made it big as an adult. Starting out with the usual TV movies and guest roles, he vaulted to Disney Channel fame on Even Stevens. He quickly jumped off the tween-idol train and started making a mix of worthy independent films and memorable mainstream work aimed at kids. Holes remains a delight; the Project Greenlight winner The Battle of Shaker Heights is probably that HBO show’s most likable entry; the animated film Surf’s Up coasted to a surprise Oscar nomination on the back of its agreeable goofiness.

LaBeouf also started popping up as a helpful teen sidekick in major action movies. Did you remember that LaBeouf was in Alex Proyas’s utopian-future action movie I, Robot? Or the underrated Keanu Reeves-starring demonic thriller Constantine? Or the much maligned, but surprisingly self-aware Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle? It’s hard to remember LaBeouf’s work on the sidelines of these middling-to-good Hollywood blockbusters because his performances were all about easy charm—a charm that has been whittled away by years of horrible behavior and self-indulgent posturing. When LaBeouf puts a paper bag over his head and invites us to mock him, it’s hard not to think of him as a tragic figure, even if he’s trying to get in on the joke.

LaBeouf’s performances were all about an easy charm that’s been whittled away by years of self-indulgent posturing.

So here he’s wisely brought the conversation back to the movies themselves. His work in the 2006 Queens coming-of-age drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints remains his best, and netted the strongest reviews of his career. He then vaulted to stardom in 2007 with Disturbia, a fun take on Rear Window; then headlined Michael Bay’s first three Transformers movies; and played Harrison Ford’s son in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Michael Douglas’s heir in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Directors like Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg were once anointing LaBeouf as the next big thing. Though he’s been reportedly sleeping through the screening of the Transformers movies (gotta catch a few winks somewhere), his agreeably hapless character helped ground those outlandish films in some semblance of reality.

Between 2007 and 2011, LaBeouf’s films grossed an average of $231 million at the U.S. box office—a impressive feat matched by an equally epic fall from grace. Since then he’s stuck mostly to indie films, music videos, and art projects, with some frustrated-star behavior sprinkled in. There’s nothing unusual about that—indeed, it’s a sadly typical Hollywood trajectory—and when I heard about LaBeouf’s experiment at the Angelika, it sounded like his usual self-involvement rendered as self-sacrifice (he’s stuck in the theater for three days). Entertainment Weekly’s Ariana Bacle visited the theater and sat right night to LaBeouf, thinking she’d maybe steal some of his popcorn, then realized she had “momentarily ignored that LaBeouf is real,” underlining the dehumanization of stardom the actor is looking to highlight.

It’s a pretty facile point about fame, but in inviting people to watch movies with him, LaBeouf has at least disconnected from the most narcissistic aspects of his performance art. Last year, he staged a performance in a Los Angeles gallery called #IAMSORRY, where he wore a paper bag on his face and invited people to come stare at him. Some shouted abuse; one, in his recounting, sexually assaulted him. There, the focus was all on LaBeouf’s public image and the positive and negative things his audience can project onto him. With #ALLMYMOVIES, the focus is back on what made him famous—the works that gave him the kind of clout to set up a free screening, which people are lining up around the block to attend (at one point, the wait was estimated at three hours by Angelika staff). In other words, it’s a public stunt about art, rather than just one masquerading as art. I call that progress.

Report: Israel Strikes Target in Syria ... Again

Over the course of Syria’s four-and-a-half-year-old civil war, Israel has quietly been drawn in at times. It occasionally treats wounded Syrians in its hospitals and, according to reports, occasionally bombs weapon conveys or retaliates for cross-border fire.

On Wednesday night, Israel reportedly launched another strike against targets at or near the airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus, which is under the control of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“Opposition media outlets [in Syria] reported that explosions were heard at the airport, followed by a power outage and the temporary grounding of aircraft,” the Israeli paper Ynet reported, noting a Facebook page associated with the Assad regime also claimed an attack has taken place. Notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington, D.C., where he was having a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

As The Times of Israel notes, the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on Wednesday’s report, which is in line with its policy. In the past, Israel has said it would act to ensure sophisticated weapons don’t reach Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite militant group that has been active in Syria. Less than two weeks ago, Israeli airstrikes were said to hit assets belonging to the Assad regime and Hezbollah, which Israel and the U.S. regard as a terrorist organization.

What is potentially different about recent Israeli attacks has to do with the new involvement of Russian forces, which are now engaging on the ground and in the air in Syria. In a meeting this fall, Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to a deconfliction mechanism, which would work to make sure the two parties didn’t attack each other.

However, as Moscow further entrenches with the Assad regime and Iran, both of which are enemies of the Jewish state, it gets more difficult to imagine that future Israeli strikes will not prompt a response from one of the many parties involved in the Syrian conflict.

Can the Media Fix Hollywood Diversity's Problem?

When The New York Times reported last December about the intrigue that usually surrounds The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 100 most influential women in the film and TV industries, it was easy enough to imagine the story spawning a movie of its own. The genre? Farce, probably. Imagine: Nervous publicists showing Powerpoint presentations about their clients to THR editors, said editors arguing among themselves about whether a Disney executive should be ranked higher than a DreamWorks one, and scores of accomplished women converging on one suspenseful unveiling breakfast that results in tears and cheers and plotting—all while Hollywood’s board rooms, directors’ chairs, and top-earners lists remain occupied mostly by men.

A note posted online Wednesday from THR’s editor-in-chief Janice Min opens by acknowledging the craziness of all of the above, pointing out that Entourage has already spoofed it. She then lays out some facts that are more likely to suggest a possible Oscar-contending drama. Despite years of public calls for inclusivity in Hollywood, the number of women directors of big-budget movies has declined, the pay gap between actresses and actors stays substantial, and women remain shockingly rare at the highest levels of the companies that own major movie studios. Now, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened an investigation into gender discrimination in the industry. And THR has decided to end its annual ranking of women, saying that what had started as an attempt to empower one gender has only ended up pitting its members against each other. Min explains,

There is a phrase that men use, including my male financial-industry boss, when talking about combining assets: “Think how powerful we are if we hunt as a pack.” Women don’t use phraseology like that, but maybe it’s time. Today, as part of that thinking, The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard are abolishing the rankings for both lists and instead each anointing a single annual class of a Power 100 (Hollywood Reporter) and a Power 50 (Billboard). There still will be designations for executive woman of the year at both titles and other marks of distinction to be revealed. This is probably also a good time to tell you we’re creating an inaugural ranked list of entertainment’s most powerful people — men and women — as part of our upcoming fifth anniversary year celebrating The Hollywood Reporter’s relaunch. I say, game on in that regard. But right here, right now, the moment feels wrong to host a female cage match.

Min’s announcement makes a good case for scrapping all-female power rankings—and has the handy secondary effect of asserting the relevance of THR’s brand—though she doesn’t overpromise about the secondary social effects this’ll have: “Will this change make an impact? I don’t know.”

The announcement is just the latest splashy journalistic effort around the issue of cultural diversity. In Variety this week, Maureen Ryan published an empirical investigation about the lack of female minority directors working on TV. She writes of “statistical gridlock,” pointing out that “white men constitute 31 percent of the American population, but for years, they’ve gotten more than two-thirds of directing gigs—and at some cable networks, that number is closer to 80 or even 90 percent.” Often, she writes, those making Hollywood hiring decisions won’t consider women and people of color because they don’t have the “right” kind of experience—creating a catch-22 situation for populations that have been historically excluded. One vivid example she offers: The Oscar-winning longtime movie director John Singleton, who’s black, faced a surprisingly difficult vetting process to be allowed to helm a single episode of Empire.

Also earlier this month, Vulture came up with an impressive list of “100 women directors Hollywood should be hiring” along with reporting about the reasons many of them have had trouble finding work. Industry professionals talked to Kyle Buchanan about some of the most common—and often, dubious—rationales against picking female filmmakers, including, “Women can’t direct action” and, “We asked one, and she said no.”

All of these media efforts draw attention to longstanding disparities and offer evidence suggesting that there’s money to be made in diversity (look at Shondaland). But they also draw attention to the fact that, well, attention probably isn’t enough. Wide change will require the cooperation of people in Hollywood boardrooms and hiring meetings—the paradox being that those places are far from diverse. Perhaps that’s why the recent public campaign of Aziz Ansari, the comedian whose new show Masters of None just hit Netflix, has been so resonant. He’s worked both in front of and behind the camera, and in The New York Times Tuesday, he wrote frankly about the challenges his team faced when trying to find the right Asian actor—and about how the process reminded him where his own big break came from:

When we were looking for an Asian actor for Master of None, my fellow creator, Alan Yang, asked me: “How many times have you seen an Asian guy kiss someone in TV or film?” After a long hard think, we came up with two (Steven Yeun on The Walking Dead and Daniel Dae Kim on Lost). It made me realize how important it was not to give up on our search.

But I wouldn’t be in the position to do any of this, and neither would Alan, unless some straight white guy, in this case Mike Schur, had given us jobs on Parks and Recreation. Without that opportunity, we wouldn’t have developed the experience necessary to tell our stories. So if you’re a straight white guy, do the industry a solid and give minorities a second look.

On The Late Show last night, Ansari looked one of those white guys in the face and humorously induced a bit of discomfort about the lack of diversity in late night, and on Stephen Colbert’s own staff. Ansari’s presence meant 50 percent of the people on-screen were non-white, “an all-time high for CBS,” he joked. It was funny and tense moment, an example of the kind of confrontation that might be more common in the future.

Myanmar’s First Free Election in 25 Years

On Wednesday, Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, congratulated Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) appears to be close to an absolute majority in the country’s first free elections in 25 years.

The story of a country long closed off from the world taking a step toward a more open society is a nice one, but in Myanmar’s case, it’s neither tidy nor certain. This paragraph in Reuters’s report of the incoming election results sums up some of the quirks (to put it mildly) of Myanmar’s historic election.

Results so far gave Suu Kyi’s party 179 of 216 seats declared out of the 330 seats not allocated to the military in the lower house. Under the junta-crafted constitution, a quarter of the seats in both chambers are unelected and reserved for the armed forces.

(Thousands of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority were also kept from voting.)

Despite Sein’s stated commitment to accept the election results, history suggests that Myanmar’s military, which has ruled in some form or another since the 1960s, may not allow Suu Kyi and the NLD to take control of the country's legislative and executive branches.

For her efforts to bring democracy to her country, Suu Kyi languished under house arrest for the majority of the years between 1989 and 2010. Her NLD won a sweeping victory in the 1990 elections, the results of which were nullified by the military. She became one of the world’s most celebrated political prisoners and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1991.

While her party may have triumphed in this week’s elections, the country’s military has barred her from becoming president because her children are British nationals. She has reiterated that this prohibition will not stop her “from making all the decisions.” But the extent to which she will be able to rule or to effectively enter a power-sharing agreement with her former captors remains unclear.

In the meantime, Suu Kyi and the opposition have agreed to hold reconciliation talks at some to-be-determined point in the near future. She also invited the leader of the army to join the talks, but he has apparently not responded yet.

Anger in New Zealand’s Parliament

After New Zealand’s prime minister invoked rape in an angry parliamentary debate over the fate of New Zealanders detained at an Australian migrant-detention facility, female legislators responded by revealing that they were victims of sexual assault—and were then kicked out by the chamber’s speaker.

Prime Minister John Key’s comments were made Tuesday, during a debate over the issue of New Zealanders—some with criminal records—being detained on Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory. Some have lived in Australia for years, but face deportation because of a change in Australian immigration policy. The opposition Labour and Green parties asked the prime minister about what will happen to the detainees. Key pounced on the question, accusing the parties of “backing the rapists.”

Watch Key’s comments that resulted in the furor:

“These are the people that the Labour party are saying are more important to support than New Zealanders who deserve protecting when they come back here,” Key said, later telling a Labour member: “If you want to put yourself on the side of sex offenders, go ahead my son, but we’ll defend New Zealanders.”

About three-quarters of Labour MPs and several Green MPs walked out of parliament after Key’s remarks, The Guardian reported.

On Wednesday, female members joined together to directly protest Key’s remarks, taking turns sharing their stories and requesting an apology from the prime minister.

It started with Metiria Turei, the co-leader of the Green party.

“As a victim of sexual assault, I take personal offense to the prime minister’s comments and ask that you require him to withdraw and apologize,” she said.

House Speaker David Carter told her that because the prime minister had not spoken Wednesday, he could not ask him to address Turei’s request.

Jan Logie of the Green Party spoke next, asking “as a victim of sexual assault and as an advocate for survivors” that Key’s words be expunged from the record.

Carter cut her off. “What happened yesterday happened yesterday. Yes, collectively it wasn’t addressed well at the time, but time has passed.”

More MPs followed, including Labour’s Poto Williams and Green’s Catherine Delahunty, whose microphone was turned off after she said she was a victim of sexual assault. Carter said the legislators were “flouting the rules” of parliament by claiming to make points of order, and that any who made similar statements would be ordered to leave the House. Despite the warning, female MPs continued to stand. Green MP Marama Davidson was then thrown out, followed by Williams. The Guardian reports at least eight other female MPs, along with four male MPs, then chose to leave the chamber.

Watch what happened here:

Outside the chamber, Logie told The New Zealand Herald that it was the first time she had spoken out loud about her sexual assault.

“It’s deeply disappointing that the speaker and the prime minister do not take the concerns of sexual survivors seriously. It’s completely unacceptable to trivialize the concern and experiences of so many New Zealanders in the way that has happened today.”

MPs acknowledged that Carter was bound by House rules, but criticized the eviction of female MPs from the chamber. “What message does that send to young women?” Labour’s Clare Curran told the Herald.