Bob’s Burgers and Murder Mysteries: Comfort TV as an Art Form 

Every night I watch Bob’s Burgers to fall asleep. I’ve never been good at laying quietly in the dark. I tend to start thinking about death after about one minute of silence. Bob’s, and its talented voice actors, lull me into complacent sleep. Bob’s Burger’s is a gentle, animated comedy about a family of sweet weirdos and their underappreciated burger restaurant. I could, and many have, extoll its virtues (and discuss its flaws), but I want to praise it for what I’ve been calling “anti-realism:” fiction that creates its own world with its own rules—a world that shares some DNA with the real world, but is not in our universe. It’s not fantasy, going by genre conventions, because there is no magic or supernatural elements, but neither is it straight realism. (I’m pretty sure there is another, actual definition for anti-realism, but this is what I’m calling this concept for now. Let me know if you have a better term!)

Bob’s Burgers world is a world where cell phones exist, but Tina’s middle school is not governed by social media. Where fourth graders hang out with eighth graders relatively peacefully. Where every new character the Belcher family encounters in the colorful tourist town they live in is some kind of weirdo—sometimes rude or bizarre, but never cruel or violent (besides the occasional comedic fisty-cuffs.) Bob and Linda are excellent, creative, empathetic parents, and the stakes of their adventures are never very high. 

 That is not to say that Bob’s Burgers isn’t without conflict or stratification—the premise of the show is explicitly about class. The Belchers are a working-class family who live in an apartment above their restaurant, and they work themselves to exhaustion to afford rent to the gentle, silly villain of the show—their landlord Mr. Fischoeder. Anti-realism, as I’m thinking of it, doesn’t mean a world in which the harshness of the real world doesn’t exist at all, but just a world with different rules. I happen to love Bob’s Burgers because the rules are specific, gentle, and delightful. There is nothing wrong about wanting your fiction to delight. 

Anti-realism can also be created through structure and genre. Bob’s is the kind of cartoon that has built in time-wobbliness: no one ever ages, although characters do grow and change just a little. At first, I was bothered by this. I worried that my favorite characters were locked in a kind of purgatory. But my husband said he likes to think of each season of Bob’s as an alternate universe: many different variations of a year in the life of this family. Thus, it narratively escapes the pain of time passing, and people growing old.

This re-setting, repetitive structure is why I am obsessed with mysteries, specifically “cozy” mysteries. I love this wonderful article about Murder She Wrote in Electric Literature by Hannah Berger, where she argues that why she finds Murder She Wrote so comforting is because of the amnesia of the structure. Each episode Jessica Fletcher solves a new murder, seemingly forgetting the numerous other murders she has already solved, never wondering why her life is besieged by so much death. I was struck by this observation because it so succinctly expressed why I find murder mysteries so comforting, despite them being about, you know, murder. Because of the re-setting structure, murder mysteries, as a genre, are a kind of anti-realism. They exist in a world full of murder, but the murders do not pile up. Even in slightly more serious mystery shows, like Vera for example, the characters are not weighed down by the harsh violence of their world, as they would be in ours. Thus, they are comforting: a vehicle for character work, comedy, fun settings, and mystery-solving. 

Due to pandemic despair, I have spent the last several months watching numerous cozy murder mysteries, often with a jigsaw puzzle as accompaniment. I have been inspired by the genre, and by my musings about realism, anti-realism, and gentleness and comfort in storytelling. I have been writing some new stories inspired by the murder mystery genre, and that play with genre and structure in general, which I hope I can share soon. 

 Until then, see below for a list of cozy mysteries if you too want to escape into that world. If you do, I recommend a subscription to Acorn and BritBox. Also please give the article, In Praise of “Murder She Wrote,” My Pandemic Lullaby by Hannah Berger a read, it’s excellent. 

My favorite cozy mysteries recently (mostly British and Australian), listed most cozy to most realistic: 

 Agatha Raisin 

Queens of Mystery 

Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries 

Death In Paradise

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries 

McDonald and Dodds 

My Life Is Murder 

Murdoch Mysteries 

Vera 

 

 

On Looking At My Face In The Mirror, A Year Into A Pandemic

After a year of isolation, I am irritated with my own company.

There’s not really a good way to write about this pandemic. There is no one essay that could capture the whole experience. And everyone has their own essays they could write. I cannot really say anything sweeping or universal about this year, but here is a slice of how I’ve been feeling. 

I want to look at other peoples’ face again. I have spent way too much time looking at my own.

*

 New Beauty Standards 

I had to take a photo of myself to get my passport renewed. My partner took twenty photos, too many to stand. I cried. I thought, photos of me look like photos of a woman who has been living in a well. 

My face looks droopy to me. I look old, tired, and sad. I hear these words on repeat when I look at myself. 

Apparently, teenagers on Tik Tok are drawing dark circles under their eyes with make-up. It is a new “beauty trend” for which I need to do no work. The circles under my eyes have taken over my whole face. Do we make trauma and tragedy into beauty? Like how looking feverish and pale was trendy when everyone was dying of tuberculosis? If Keats died of tuberculosis, it must be sexy. 

Or are we just getting pranked by the teens? 

All I know is that last year I was 29. I was the most hot, fun, young, and wise I had ever been. 

*

On a podcast recently, a doctor said that relationships are mild anti-depressants. Instead of seeing my friends, I have started running and listening to podcasts (podcast people are your close personal friends, right?) For that forty minutes of running and the hour that follows, I feel good. Then I feel vague again. 

*

This obsession with my face is about identity. When I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself it’s because I am different person than I was a year ago. And that is painful. 

*

Movies About Identity Crises

The Thing (why is it not human? Could I become it?)

Ex Machina (am I alive? am I a woman, as defined by a man?)

Blackfish (is a whale a person, if a person is defined by soul rather than body?)

An American Werewolf In London (am I an inherently bad person?)

Kissing Jessica Stein (why am I not more gay, dammit?) 

Black Swan (do I want to have sex with her, or do I want to be her?)

I Heart Huckabees (is everything around me bullshit, including myself?)

It’s Complicated (why am I not happy with my already beautiful kitchen?) 

I wonder what sort of movies will be made about this time. How will art be influenced by this year of loneliness, grief, loss, and living with ourselves? What sort of body horror about unstable identity or comedy about isolation? What will art look like when it’s responding to a year we were failed by the government? A year of cognitive dissonance when so many people, egged on by a tyrannical president, just pretended the pandemic wasn’t happening. A year when all the lies about America they told us in school became more clear than ever.

*

Blog Thoughts 

I took a long hiatus from my little blog. The pandemic sucked a lot of writing energy out of me, and what little I had I tried to preserve for the stories and “novel project” I have in the works. (Unclear whether said project will result in an actual novel. Stay tuned.) 

I don’t know what I will do with this blog in the future. I am thinking of sticking to these small, pop-culture thoughts—ideas I want to share but aren’t quite robust enough for an entire essay. 

Also, stay tuned for another short story of mine that will be published soon! I’m very excited to share it. 

 

Cat Cult: Some Thoughts About CATS

(First off, it should have had an exclamation point: CATS!) 

Everyone is writing and talking about this damn movie, and I will too because it is amazing. I mean, it’s awful, but delightfully so. Terrible, nonsensical, terrifying, uncanny, and delightful. There’s so much in the world that’s truly terrible that this hairball of a movie is a breath of fresh air. That’s where its genius lies.

I had to be talked into seeing CATS by my friend because the trailers scared the shit out of me. You all know what I’m talking about: the hideous half-human celebrity, half-cat creatures who look like they got stuck mid-transformation. Like how Hermione Granger would have looked in the second Harry Potter movie if they had had “digital fur technology” (whatever the fuck that is) back in 2002. The human eyes and noses; the cat ears and tails that move; the human bodies slickly covered in fur.

But she convinced me and we saw it a few days before Christmas in a mostly empty theater. Katie and I both love musicals, although neither of us had ever seen this particular one. I had the original broadway recording CD as a kid, which I enjoyed but didn’t really get. I figured I was missing a lot of the story. It turns out I wasn’t! This show barely has a story, and the movie apparently even added more, which is hard to comprehend. It’s mostly just cats singing songs to introduce themselves to the audience and to their cult leader in hopes of ascending to cat heaven(?)

Katie and I walked in a minute or two late, just as the first number was starting. The Jellicle Cats were singing ominously to the main character, convincing her to join their Cat Cult. I kind of liked this about the movie: there was no handholding. It started on a super weird note and only got weirder. As a viewer your choice was to get on board right away or bail. Join the Cat Cult. 

As we sipped our Mango White Claw (a very cult-y product that I tried for the first time that day), Katie and I kept giving each other looks and saying “what the fuck is going on.” Ten minutes into the movie came a scene that truly shook me. The Rebel Wilson cat unzipped her skin and revealed another layer of fur and a sparkly pink outfit. Then the wobbly camera zoomed in on dancing mice and cockroaches with human faces, which the unzipped cat proceeded to eat. That scene really dares you to keep watching. 

Here are some of my other major contentions with this film:

• The Jellicle Cats are apparently led by Old Dueteronomy (half cat, half Judi Dench), and each year one of them gets sent to the ‘Heavyside Layer.” Literally, that’s how the movie ends. Is this actually heaven? Or is this more of a Heaven’s Gate suicide cult situation? This is never explored or explained. 

• Some cats wear fabulous fur coats: is the fur made from other cats? Dogs? Squirrels?

• Are there humans in this world? There are human things, and this supposedly takes place in London, but then there are Cat themed strip clubs and “Milk Bars.” Does this, as Katie speculated, take place in a post apocalyptic world where cats have taken over? 

• What size are these cats?! The scale of this movie is all over the damn place. 

• Watching these famous actors try to act like cats by licking/cleaning/slinking/mewing/lapping milk was disturbing and hilarious. 

• Who let Taylor Swift keep that terrible British accent? 

• Why did they edit out Jason Derulo’s bulge? This movie is already super horny and his character, Rum Tum Tugger (really), is as horny as a cat-human hybrid could be. Why not just go for it? 

Here are some things I enjoyed: 

• The cats kiss each other by nuzzling heads. It’s hilarious, and much more sanitary than human kissing. 

• Jennifer Hudson’s solo Memory was legitimately good. 

• The magician cat (Mr. Mistoffelees) had a magic wand which was actually just a pencil.

Katie and I left the theater baffled by what we had seen, but on our walk home we sang musical theater songs that we had learned by heart as kids. As technically terrible and nonsensical as this movie was, it was joyful. It was absurd and it didn’t care. The Broadway show it is based on is insane, and instead of trying to tame (ahem) it and make it more palatable for the “mainstream,” CATS just fucking went for it. And I have to admire it for that. 

When you’re a cat you’re a cat all the way. 

What a way to end the decade.

Genre is Bullshit, But Let’s All Read Romance

I am on a mission to reclaim the romance novel. 

Although great romance writers of the past like the Brontës and Jane Austen are now considered “literary fiction,” most modern romances and rom-coms are relegated to “chick lit” or “beach reads,” because it is a genre that is often written by and for women.

Said Virginia Woolf, of the way society embraces masculine values: 

“Speaking crudely, football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes ‘trivial.’ And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with feelings of women in a drawing-room.”

My maternal grandmother was an obsessive reader. She was an intellectual who loved nothing better than to sit by the ocean, drink her favorite port in the evenings, and read everything. She read historical non-fiction, political texts, murder mysteries, humor, “literary fiction”, “pop fiction”, Harry Potter—everything she found engaging. She loved a good story. She was not a genre snob.

Genre snobbery—declaring some kinds of writing (traditionally realism, traditionally masculine and white) “literary” and others “pop” or “genre” is gatekeeping—it’ a way of deciding what’s in the “literary canon” and what isn’t. It’s a way for those in power (white men and sometimes white women) to elevate their own perspective, to reinforce their cultural and ideological power. 

The late, great Toni Morrison—and I hope I paraphrase her accurately— said that the “American literary canon” essentially upholds white supremacy. It centers white, mostly male perspectives, and dismisses different perspectives—those of Black writers (and other writers of color, LGTBQ writers, etc.) as “niche”—and lesser. Genre snobbery helps to uphold the “literary canon.”

I grew up steeped in the literary canon and with my fair share of genre snobbery. The idea that sci-fi, fantasy, crime novels, and romance are of lesser literary quality was an idea so ingrained in me that I am still working on undoing it. In my early twenties I proudly showed a friend of mine my bookcase that I alphabetized and sorted into genres with “literary fiction” on top, and “genre fiction” on the bottom. He was appropriately disgruntled. 

Some of these walls have begun to break down—both for me and in the wider literary community. The division between “literary fiction” and “genre fiction” is beginning to dissolve. Writers who play with genre (like Octavia Butler and Carmen Maria Machado, just to name a couple) show how expansive literature can be—how exciting magical realism, science fiction, horror, and other “genres” can be. How narrow and reductive the white, male perspective of literature can be. 

I want to read more romance and I want to see it embraced, the way these other “genres” have been. After all, Johnathan Franzen can write about women’s feelings in a drawing room and have it declared “The Great American Novel”—romance, written by women, especially women of color and queer women—needs more attention. 

This is partly a marketing problem, but it’s also a cultural problem. When I was younger, if I saw a book that was pink and green, had curly writing on the cover and was written by a woman, my initial reaction was to dismiss it. Once, in college, I became furious at a man for saying that Jane Austen was “chick lit.” I said something like it’s so much more than that! It’s witty and subversive and satirical! This is all true—but who cares? Even romance novels that are just romance novels (and not also expertly crafted social commentaries) shouldn’t be called “chick lit” because the term itself is derogatory. It’s a term that in and of itself is meant to deride women and their taste and intelligence. It’s misogynist and boring and we need to get rid of it. 

Recently I’ve been reading romance novels before bed because I am a bad sleeper and the world is a terrible nightmare. I prefer modern rom-coms with sweet, respectful male leads if the object of desire is a man. (The Mr. Rochester/lovable asshole male lead issue is a whole other essay.) Since the spring I’ve read The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory, The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes, and Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have critiques. I’m not going to pretend that The Royal We is the same caliber of writing as say Persuasion. But I also don’t think it’s particularly useful to compare them. I’m arguing we should resist some of our desire to rank, and we should resist our urge to dismiss a book because its chief concern is its female protagonist’s emotions. We should instead embrace stories on their own terms. Romance novels are meant to be satisfying escapes—are meant to offer us the pleasure of experiencing a good love story. If you like romance—read them, watch them, enjoy them. Don’t worry about whether it’s highbrow or not. 

I wanted to love The Wedding Date because I liked the main character, and I was excited for a fun, fluffy, interracial romance (those need more representation!) However I only liked it—the prose, for me, didn’t trust its readers enough, and fell into the classic trap of “telling instead of showing.”

The Royal We was emotionally rich and gripping, but its male lead was slightly flat.

Red, White and Royal Blue had a compelling queer romance at the center, but the alternate universe with a Democrat female president was jarring to read in this reality, and took me out of the world when the plot became too political. 

My favorite was Evvie Drake Starts Over, which had a more somber, serious tone, two delightful but complicated characters, a beautiful rendering of small-town Maine, and Linda Holmes’s lovely, controlled prose guiding it along. If you’re wanting to dive into this genre—come borrow my copy of this book. 

The genre of romance itself has issues with representation and gatekeeping. Imitating the racist and sexist values of our society, it has centered white and heterosexual writers and stories. It has certainly participated in perpetuating internalized misogynist tropes. As readers of the genre we must make sure we break down those walls as well—that within romance all our different voices and perspectives are celebrated, especially those who are marginalized.

Fortunately, there seems to be a bit of a romance boom at the moment—and Black writers like Jasmine Guillory are writing best-sellers. There are so many different writers writing romance currently—I’m excited to read more, and I’m excited to see where this genre will go, what new and exciting romantic stories we will have the pleasure of reading. 

I hope that the distinction between the “romance novel” and the “literary novel” will get murkier, and that we stop calling romance novels “chick lit.” 

Next I’m diving back into Jasmine Guillory’s world to read The Proposal, but I’m new to this journey—if anyone has any suggestions for romance novels you think I would like, please send them along!

Finally, as one last knock against genre snobbery, please check out my brilliant friend Katie’s book-review website! Katie, like my late grandmother did, reads everything regardless of genre, and writes reviews of the many, many books she reads—“pop fiction”, thrillers, family dramas—and novels about women’s feelings in drawing rooms. 

Avengers: Endgame and Abortion

Originally published May 27, 2019

Did you all see Avengers: Endgame? Of course you did. Did anyone else think it was kind of fucked up how Black Widow died? She died, basically, to uphold the hetero-patriarchy. When it came down between her, a woman who can’t make babies, and Hawk-Eye, the dud of the Avengers but a man with a wife and family, it was Natasha who had to die. Because women are disposable. Women who can’t (or don’t)  make babies don’t get their own movies. They don’t even get funerals. 

Am I the only one who read the movie this way? 

So here we are in a shit-storm of sexist attacks on abortion rights. All that sits between us and the overturning of Roe V. Wade is a few lost court cases and a Supreme Court dominated by men who would fucking love to see people who are or can be pregnant suffer. These laws are rooted in misogyny, but not everyone who can be pregnant is a woman—trans men and non-binary people can be affected by these laws as well. Anti-abortion laws are not about abortion. They are about controlling people’s bodies. 

I’m so mad that my teeth hurt. 

Pop culture is where I go to eek out joy around the angry and scared. Fuck the Marvel movies—why do I keep giving them my money? Black Widow's story--written by men--fits so neatly into the hetero-patriarchal narrative. But there are other stories. 

When the magnificent PEN15 came out on Hulu this year I lost my shit. I had never felt so seen by a TV show. It follows Maya and Anna, two thirteen-year-old seventh-graders who are played by 31 year-old women (Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle), who also wrote the show. It sounds absurd, and it is. It is also glorious. Set in the year 2000 (truly a different era), the casting allows the show to dive into the embodiment of being a thirteen-year-old girl in ways that wouldn’t work with younger actresses. Erskine and Konkle so believably embody their teen-selves with slouching, fashion choices, and self-conscious bra-adjusting, that you begin to forget that they are not thirteen. 

This is a show where the main characters are obsessed with boys, but it is not about the boys.  This is a show that isn’t afraid to dive into everything, psychologically and bodily, about what it’s like to a thirteen-year-old girl. Puberty, social anxiety, losing the sense of self that came with being a child, how racism plays out among middle-schoolers, discovering masturbation, the transformative power of thongs. This show has fucking everything. 

Meanwhile, and I can’t say this enough, Natasha didn’t even get a funeral. She couldn’t have even gotten a joint-funeral with Tony (I’M A DAD I’M SO IMPORTANT NOW) Stark? Jesus. 

I’m terrified for the people with uteruses who live in the “heartbeat bill” states. (By the way, embryos don’t have heartbeats—they don’t have hearts. Even if they did—they still aren’t a baby, and they still occupy someone’s womb. Someone who has a heart and a heartbeat.) For now, though, abortion remains legal. These bills will be challenged in court, which is exactly what the anti-choice extremists want—so that eventually they can overturn Roe V. Wade. 

If you’re reading this, you know all this. You’ve probably also spent the last few weeks with rage and fear induced tension headaches. This post is not even about abortion—I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s about stories. It’s about narratives. The “forced birth” zealots and misogynist coalition have been pushing one narrative—about murderous, slutty women. These fucked up stories have power, but so do the stories that humanize people.

There’s a lot more work to do to represent of the plethora of human experiences and identities in story-telling. There’s a lot more work to do just to create access for people to tell their stories. But I've been noticing recently a trend toward telling abortion stories on television. In the past few years I've seen stories about characters getting abortions on Jane The Virgin, Crazy-Ex Girlfriend, Shrill and Sex Education. Each story is different, but each character is treated with humanity. It is a choice that characters make that is important and meaningful, but it does not define them. They make the choice to honor their own lives, their own desires, their own bodies.

Something is working. Roe V. Wade is supported by the majority of Americans. Perhaps I’m struggling for a connection where there is none. But at a time when reproductive rights are under attack and women and pregnant people are vilified, there is a wellspring of entertainment telling different stories. We need more stories, and we need more stories about reproductive issues that don't just feature cisgender women--but it's a start. Something is happening. Maybe it's part of why the anti-choicers are on the attack.

Shows like PEN15 are a part of this as well, because it is a show that speaks from the raw, unfiltered, perspective of a teenage girl. It is not voyeuristic; it is intimate. There is an episode where Erksine's character discovers masturbation. Masturbation—a selfish moment, a moment alone, a moment about her. Konkle and Erskine were brilliant to cast themselves to play their younger selves, because they can embody their pubescent selves. They point the camera right at their bodies and say look at this. This is important. 

So is this a hopeful or a cynical post? Not sure yet. 

Demand better stories than Avengers: Endgame.

Keep an eye on the Supreme Court.

*Recommendations this time: send money to reproductive rights groups if you can; as well as trans rights and advocacy groups. Watch season 2 of Vida which is sexy and amazing, and go see Booksmart!

2017—Present: The Hate Watch

Originally published February 8, 2019

TV Recap of 2017—Present 

Season 3, Episode 1 

The Hate Watch 

Season Three (also known as 2019) is not off to a great start. While the Trump administration continues its reign of incompetence that causes harm and racist leaders in Virginia refuse to take their offenses seriously, scammers and gaslighters abound in our entertainment. I recently watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) the competing “Fyre Festival” documentaries (each journalistically compromised in their own way) that caused a flurry across the internet. I would never want to suggest that we shouldn’t be paying attention to Trump’s ridiculous show because we have to be able to respond when he shuts down the government or introduces a new hateful platform. And I would certainly never suggest that we shouldn’t watch so much television, even the stuff in which we can indulge our more basic impulses. But reading the news and consuming entertainment has begun, in some troubling ways, to feel like the same thing. 

The other night I was feeling burnt-out and anxious and so I spent all evening watching all ten awful episodes of the second season of the Netflix show Friends From College. This show is bad. It is not bad in a way that makes it fun to talk about, it is simply bad. The characters are unlikeable (which would not be an issue if they were not also boring), the jokes rarely land, and the plot is a contrived mess. Worst of all it made me like the usually very dreamy Keegan Micheal-Key less than I used to, and for that I can never forgive it. 

My brain is like a hungry cat clawing for content. Why couldn’t I have simply gone to sleep instead of angrily typing notes to myself on my phone as I watched Friends From College long into the night? (For example this show is so weird about animals. Please don’t murder that skunk.) I’ve been going for walks in the morning recently because I am slowly but surely becoming my mother. For the first ten minutes I am itchy and anxious—I feel like I’m moving too slowly, I want to look at my phone, I am uncomfortable with the lack of stimulation. I live in a beautiful place. There’s a spot in the road where the trees open up and I can see the hill below me, a wide swath of the shimmering bay, mountains in the distance and a sky that is a different color every day. The colors do not really show up in pictures on my phone. 

My obsession with cataloging all of my complaints about a bad show makes me question my integrity as a consumer of entertainment. I know, I want to talk about ethical media consumption, which makes me the worst. After all, things are a fucking mess right now, and  can’t we just have stuff? Can’t I just watch television as a way to step out of the universe where Donald Trump is “President” and nothing means anything? Can’t we live in that alternate universe in the last season of Parks and Recreation where Leslie Knope definitely became President? 

Trump’s presidency is like watching a terrible TV show in that I hate every second of it and yet I can’t look away. (Even when I do for a while I always come back.) There is humor in it—not so much in the parodies (sorry, SNL), but in the actual content Trump is giving us himself (you can’t really make fun of someone who has no shame.) It is a normal human reaction to laugh at a dangerous buffoon. And of course, laughing is not the only way to respond: people have been organizing, voting and protesting before and since Trump appeared. Trump is, of course, not the illness but the symptom. But I am troubled by the show Trump is conducting, by the media obsession with every absurd thing he does, says or tweets. Something feels off. I sometimes wonder if we are reacting to this presidency as if it were entertainment, because it feels more like a surreal production than a Presidency. Meanwhile, people are suffering and dying because of Trump’s policies and the way he plays into the worst racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic/transphobic tendencies of his base. 

The “Fyre Festival” documentaries tell the story of Billy McFarland, a con-man with an “I really like cocaine and money” vibe who created a nonsense company designed to rip-off wealthy millennials and then attempted to put on a music festival that was actually part scam, part delusion. He is now in prison for six years for fraud. He’s also pretty famous and getting paid to do interviews about his bullshit (way to go, Hulu.) So he’s fine. 

For the majority of us, the way into the “Fyre Festival” story was schadenfreude, but one good thing the documentaries did for us was to give us context for how many people McFarland and his band of enablers hurt. It wasn’t just rich investors and kids who got cheated out their trust funds: hundreds of people who worked to set up the festival in the Bahamas were never paid. A restaurant owner and caterer on the island lost $140,000 and had to use her own money to pay her employees who worked around the clock for the festival. And because many people are good and compassionate, a Go-Fund-Me campaign has already earned her back over $170,000. This seems like the best outcome: action as well as reaction. 

The Hulu doc posits that McFarland profited off millennial narcism—that he catered to our worst impulses: FOMO, instagram obsession with “influencers”, selfies and materialism. This is a pretty boring way to paint millennials, as if we are somehow fundamentally worse than other generations: “instagram and avocado toast will doom us all” is not an original concept. Of course we want to “live our best lives,” and go to music festivals in the Bahamas (if we can afford it.) Of course we want to document our lives, watch television, try to find “positivity.” And when disaster strikes—of course we want a front row seat. 

We have no good options! Nothing means anything anymore. They say that to be taken in by a cult, con-man or extremism you have to be both vulnerable and exposed to it. Everyday we walk around in debt with very few good job options knowing that the country is being run by a egomaniacal racist propped up by a band of misogynist old white men, climate change means the end of the world as we know it will come in the next twelve years, and a Russian dictator interfered in one election and will probably do it again. If I were to get sucked in to a cult, it would be one that offered me a way out of this mess. Instagram is not the illness, it’s the symptom. 

What watching the Fyre Festival disaster and the Trump disaster teach us is how to spot a con-man. Ja-Rule, who worked closely with Billy McFarland on the Fyre Festival, infamously tweeted “I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!!” Everybody laughed at him because yeah, man, we live in the world too. Haven’t you been paying attention? 

I suppose the question is what do we do with our attention? Can we consume entertainment and news at the same time? Can we make room in our brains for critique and amusement—when it comes to TV and Trump? Or might we be better off to just take a minute to stare at the sky—to watch the snow glaze the trees—and think about what we’re going do to fix this?  I have no good answers. 

Men Have Choices (#MeToo 2018)

Originally published September 27, 2018

A million years ago, perhaps three weeks ago now, Louis C.K. insinuated himself back on to a comedy stage, appearing with no warning or prior consent of his audience, like a dick pulled out in front of an unsuspecting colleague. My partner suggested I write about it, but I had little to say other than 

Fuck that guy. 

Then I went out dancing a week or so ago with a group of female friends. I spent the evening fending off drunk, grabby men. 

At the end of the night I was furious, not just about what had happened but about how I was feeling: slightly ashamed and second guessing everything I had done.

Did I make a mistake when I smiled back at the man who was smiling at me while we danced in a group? Did I fuck up when I shook his hand and told him my name? Did I fuck up by smiling tightly and saying “thanks,” when he tugged on a strand of my hair and told me he liked it? Should I have yanked myself away, ignored his smiles and his attempts to engage me in conversation? I must have fucked up because at first I had rather enjoyed the attention. Light flirting can be harmless and flattering, and I had wrongly thought that he seemed sweet and that he wouldn’t get weird.

In short, was it my fault and should I have expected it when he grabbed my hips and plastered himself against my back? I pried his fingers away, twice I think, and eventually tried to leave the crowd of dancers to escape him. He pulled me back toward him and tried to kiss me. I ducked to avoid his kiss and said something dumb like, “It was nice to meet you but I have a boyfriend and I have to go.” His response was to nod and then take my hand and place it roughly on his dick which I could feel disturbingly clearly through his jeans. 

As I walked away as quickly as I could I was ashamed, disappointed and angry. I was mad at myself for being nice. I thought perhaps I should have been meaner right from the start. I was angry with myself for not protecting myself better, for the instinctual way I had been nice, receptive and worried about managing his feelings. 

Later that night at another bar a very drunk man who was idly pawing at various women came up to me and placed both his hands on my shoulders. I knocked his hands down firmly and said, “No.” I did not smile, I glared. And even though I was angry and in no mood, I found that harder to do than I imagined. My instinct, I learned that night, is not shut it down with a glare. I have been socialized to be nice to men, especially if they are showing interest in me. 

And then I got really fucking angry. Why shouldn’t I able to be nice to a guy who’s flirting with me at a bar without him grabbing my hand and sticking it on his dick? 

Why did I feel the need to manage the feelings of these men? Why must I manage their behavior? Why can’t they just behave themselves like adults? 

And as mad as I was, that was nothing. I was angry, violated, a little ashamed for no reason, but I was fine. It’s not even the grossest thing that has happened to me, and I’ve been fairly lucky so far. But it’s all related. It is an illustration of how so many men are taught to think of women as sexual property rather than people. 

Which brings us to these past few weeks. At least three women have now come forward to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting them. I believe them for many reasons, the least which is because I have seen that behavior before and know how common it is—it is related to the shit I experienced with those guys at the bar, just kicked up a few terrifying notches. 

Men have choices. Women, by talking about what men have done to them and reporting assault and warning the country about the assault they have suffered at the hands of say, the President or a SCOTUS nominee, are not “ruining” the lives or reputations of these men. It is often the opposite—the assault or harassment has scarred the women, affected their happiness and careers, and to speak publicly often brings them even more pain (Dr. Ford, for example, has had to move out of her house due to death threats.) 

Men, like everyone, have choices. Too often they make the wrong ones. I cannot understand why we lament about “ruining” men’s lives when in reality we rarely hold them responsible for the harm they do to women. If, as in the case of Harvey Weinstein or Les Moonves, their careers are ended, it is nobody’s fault but their own.

An Ode to (Bi) Pride

Originally published July 6, 2018

Pride month has come and gone again. More often than not I find myself missing the key moments—the parades, the dance parties, etc. There’s a number of reasons for this: I’m busy, I don’t like crowds, parades, or talking to strangers, I don’t have a good queer crowd to go with. But I’ve got to admit that part of the reason I end up missing pride events is that some part of me feels that I don’t quite belong there. 

I am bisexual. I also think that queer or pansexual describe me well but I usually come back to bisexual because it’s classic, more complex than people realize, and often misunderstood. We’re everywhere, but because so many of us are “hiding” in “heterosexual” relationships, it can feel like we are slightly invisible. You probably know so many bi people, you don’t even know. 

I am also in a monogamous relationship with a man, so I often “pass for straight.” Usually this doesn’t bother me because not everyone I meet needs to know the complex workings of my soul and sexuality. But there are times when the invisibility gets to me. The other day I work I found myself leaping at the opportunity to out myself when a co-worker was talking about a bi friend of hers who was marrying a man. I wanted my coworkers to know me better, but the act of outing myself left me slightly shaky and blushing. At my last job where I worked for over two years with a tight-knit group of people, I never came out, not even to the other queer people there because I could never find a not-awkward way to bring it up. I talked about my partner—a man—and other things going on in my life, but I could never find a way to say, “by the way, I know I’ve talked about my boyfriend and I have long hair and present pretty femme, but I like women and have dated them and slept with them but it’s been a while and sometimes I feel more attracted to men and at other times to women and sometimes to people who don’t fit neatly into either category but right now I’m dating a man but I’m still bisexual.” It’s just a weird thing to say to people, even ones you like and want to connect with. 

When I was in my early twenties my two best friends from high school and I went to a bar in our hometown. I left our table to use the bathroom and when I got back they both looked at me very seriously and asked, “Are you going to marry a man or a woman?” I was amused but also a little thrown, because I thought that it was obvious what bisexual meant. “I don’t know,” I said, “it depends on who I fall in love with.” Much love to these two, who remain my two best friends, and who I believe were trying to know me better. It didn’t bother me, but has always tickled and puzzled me. Honestly, I wish more people would ask these questions, so that bi folks like me would have more opportunities to talk about their truth. 

Although it was often been delightfully called “Twenty-Gay-Teen”, 2018 has been a particularly good year for bi-visibility. Bisexual characters are all over television (see Brooklyn Nine Nine, Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and many others.) Rosa’s coming out as bi on Brooklyn Nine Nine was particularly thrilling because she named it—the character actually said the words “I am bisexual,” and they spent a lot of time exploring exactly what that meant for Rosa and what it meant for her to come out to her co-workers who had all assumed she was straight. Not only have we had more bisexual characters, but a wealth of artists have spoken openly about being bi and queer, like Stephanie Beatriz, the actress who plays Rosa, Janelle Monae, and Tessa Thompson. It’s really exciting to hear women speak about their own sexuality in a way that resonates with my own experience—to hear them speak about being attracted to women as well as men, about feeling as if you could fall in love with anyone regardless of gender, about the need to come out and own your truth even if you aren’t actively dating a woman. Of course there have been some clunkers: the Rita Ora song “Girls,” is the musical equivalent of a stale saltine, and it is also a male-gazey, watered-down portrayal of bisexuality. “Red wine and I want to kiss girls,” reduces female bisexuality to drunken whims—it doesn’t allow for either actual romantic relationships between women or even really sexual ones—what do the men who wrote that song think women do with each other? Kissing seems to be it, because if there’s not a penis involved, what else is there, right? 

I’ll end with some recommendations for some actually great bi music to enjoy this summer: the entire new Janelle Monae album Dirty Computer which features “Pynk”, a musical ode to vaginas and “Make Me Feel,” which, even if you don’t interpret as a bi anthem, is the best song to come out this year besides Cardi B’s “I like It.” And of course the classic “Getting Bi,” from one of the smartest shows on TV, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. 

It's Way Past Time For Men To Do Better (#metoo)

Originally published November 21, 2017

I wrote the below a few weeks ago, when the women assaulted by Harvey Weinstein were just coming forward, and when the #metoo movement felt sort of raw. Now that a steadily rising number of women (and a few men as well) have come forward, and powerful men revealed to be creeps are tumbling like dominos, I have gotten a bit numb to it all. I am not surprised. The fact that harassment, sexual objectification, and misogyny is a pervasive cancer that reaches every industry is not shocking; it makes sense with how society treats women in general. The only thing that surprises me is that for once, people seem to care.

This is an important cultural moment. It is a moment of empowerment, especially for women. But it is also a moment of reckoning, especially for men, who all benefit from the patriarchy and the dehumanization of women that comes from it. I wanted to share my initial reaction, because it still gets to the heart of the issue. 

----------------   

I feel a lot of ways about #metoo. 

While I acknowledge that it's useful, it enrages me that men don't already know the extent of the problem with sexual harassment and assault; women have been telling them about it forever. It bothers me that the onus to talk about it is on women, and not on men, the people who have created the problem in the first place. It feels like another way that society asks women to be responsible for their own assault and harassment, as if it is a thing that women create, not something that is done to them by men. I hate that it is jarring and triggering to survivors of assault. 

Yes, I know, that men experience harassment as well. I am speaking of the larger, undeniable pattern. That doesn't negate anyone's experience, and it is further evidence that the patriarchy hurts us all. 

I felt uncomfortable #metooing myself, because my first thought was that I'm generally fine--the harassment I've encountered in my life seems so minor it hardly seems worth mentioning. 

Inappropriate encounters with grown men when I was a child where I escaped shaken but unscathed. An email when I turned 18 from a fifty-year-old man saying he could "tell me how hot I was, now that I was legal." Cat-calling and leers by men on the street, and that one guy who I was pretty sure was following me as I shopped in my neighborhood. But then I realized that this is exactly why I should post, and what the #metoo is attempting to speak to. As a society we have so normalized this behavior, and it is so commonplace to all women, that the extent of it gets lost. But, of course, it sucks that it happens, and it sucks to have to talk about it. I don't consider anything that has ever happened to me to be that traumatic, and yet, I don't want to say any more about it. 

Men, if you are upset by reading all of these stories from the women you know, please talk to each other about it, and call each other out when you see shitty, misogynistic behavior. Listening to women, treating women with respect, and changing rape culture is your job. 

Insomnia: An Ode to 30 Rock

Originally published October 21, 2017

The monsters at Netflix have removed 30 Rock from streaming. I am literally losing sleep over it. 

For four years, until the beginning of October, I fell asleep to the crackling rhythm of Tina Fey's jokes: to Alec Baldwin saying "Good God, Lemon," to Tracy Morgan singing "werewolf bar mitzvah," and Jane Krakowski singing, "Muffin Top." 

Sometimes I would pick an episode at random, or cycle through the seasons, but I had specific episodes that became like bedtime stories to me. I drifted off to the familiar sounds of Steve Martin saying "I miscounted the men, Liz!" in his guest appearance as Gavin Veloure, the con-man in love with Liz Lemon, and James Franco playing a version of himself who enlisted Jenna to be his fake girlfriend so that the media wouldn't find out about his sexual relationship with a body pillow. I particularly liked the episode called "Florida," in the final season, so that I could hear Liz and Jack fight as they stayed in his late mother's condo, and hear Alec Baldwin say, "I'm not going to fight in bed with a woman I'm not even having sex with!"

I am not going to argue that this is healthy for my sleep or sanity. I even suspect that while my love for 30 Rock is deeper than ever, it has lost some of the magic it once held for me. I first watched it my sophomore year of college: sitting cross-legged on my twin bed, shoveling take-out dining hall food into my mouth, doing Liz Lemon proud. I'm surprised I didn't choke; I didn't know TV could be that funny. But as it has become less of a show I watch, and more of a song I listen to to fall asleep, I miss some of the humor. When I do actually watch it with my eyes, I see that half the jokes are visual. It reminds me to put my phone down when I'm watching something new. How can my refreshed Facebook feed be better than a well-timed visual gag? 

I am also not going to argue that it is a perfect show. Perfection, of course, is not something any piece of art can actually achieve, since everyone's ideas about it are different. Subjectivity is inescapable and necessary to the creation of art. But it has flaws: some of the jokes about race and gender seem dated, especially in the earlier seasons, and I am embarrassed that I didn't notice, on the first watch, the transphobic jokes that make me cringe now. Tina Fey's joke-telling, while undeniably brilliant, occasionally falls into the tone-deaf offensive category that many comedy writers laud as "risky" and "brave." I, personally, find it distasteful. I know that a show can be absurdly funny (see Liz Lemon's online date from K-Date, the dating section of the Kraft Foods website), without belittling those whose differences you don't understand. The later seasons suffer from the classic sitcom problem of characters becoming parodies of themselves. The earned emotional ties of their relationships begin to crack as the writers stuff more outrageous jokes into their dialogue, looking to keep the punchy comedic energy of the earlier seasons going. The show picks up again in its last season, the jokes clipping along at the rhythm established solidly in the beginning, and the characters growing in appealing but not unbelievable ways. Liz Lemon gets married in a Princess Leia costume, and Jack invents clear dishwashers. All is right in its world. 

As I fall asleep, I think about the unlucky people of the past. How miserable to have to lay in the dark, listening to your own brain, waiting for the mercy of sleep. I think about people like Edgar Allen Poe. I hope, for his sake, that he had something fun to read before bed, some kind of comedy or erotica. Did he fall asleep to images of vampiric women crawling their way out of graves, or to disembodied teeth tapping at his window? If I lay in silence at night my mid veers from the shame over the stupid thing I said to a friend in high school, to the way I mishandled rejection in college, to the horrific thing I read in the news that day. What violence will befall those I love? Will we survive that earthquake that's coming for the Pacific Northwest any day now? How close to the death of democracy are we really? How likely is that Nuclear war? I turn on 30 Rock, and my mind gets lost in the dulcet tones of Liz Lemon ordering a meatball sub with extra bread. 

Sex and Politics: Thoughts on The Handmaid's Tale

Originally published July 22, 2017

I haven't known what to blog about recently because all I've been thinking about is sex and politics. One is too personal and the other too broad.

We are currently between seasons of the real-life zombie horror show that is the Trump administration's attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but for a while I could barely focus on anything except the threat of 22 million Americans losing their health insurance. When I wasn't working I was on a full diet of news and political podcasts, and sex was there as a stress relief. (My wonderful partner is also part of the stress relief. I want to give him credit without being too personal. He's watching The Handmaid's Tale on his phone as I write this.)

As a sex-positive millennial I can admit on the internet that I like and have sex (gasp!), and there's hardly a day when I don't feel incredibly grateful for the women and feminists who came before and me and fought hard so that I may do so. But we are still fighting. Since I want to run for political office someday, I can't get into any juicy details. (Not that it may matter. Other reasons I may be ridiculed if I attempt to run for anything: weed-smoking, atheism, bisexuality, speaking loudly while being female, not looking hot in pantsuits, looking too hot in pantsuits, not being married, not eating ice cream on the campaign trail due to lactose intolerance.)

Plenty of sexy and smart people have sex and politics writing covered. What I want to talk about is sex in politics. Or should I say, politics in sex. We are living in a time where the government is being "run" by a sexual predator, but this administration is more hostile to women, the LGBT community, access to birth control, sexual and reproductive health and abortions than any administration has been in roughly fifty years. In a New York Times op-ed called The Playboy President and Women's Health, Michelle Goldberg points out this insulting dichotomy, arguing that Trump is not an evangelical or social conservative and yet is attacking women's health and sexual freedom on all fronts. Mike Pence at least has the decency to pretend that he believes his twisted moral logic; it appears that Trump simply has so little respect for women as humans that he will sign away their rights with one hand and assault them with the other.

Recently, two of my closest female friends and I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale together. We sat on my porch and drank wine while we talked about it and brainstormed what we will do if this administration is successful in its attempts to get us as close to its world as possible. (I can only assume that Mike Pence keeps it by his bedside as inspiration. I do too, but for different reasons.) We talked about the moments in the book that scared us the most: the moments where we saw on the page what we can see in the world around us. The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopia, set in a future America that has been taken over by a misogynistic, racist, Evangelical government and turned into the surveillance state of Gilead. Women have been stripped of all rights and autonomy and divided up among the powerful men as property, and since there is a fertility crisis, the Handmaids are young, potentially fertile women who are being used as sex slaves. Abortion is, of course, outlawed and punishable by death.

The moment where our narrator, Offred, speaks of her "training" to become a Handmaid. One of her fellow prisoners, it is discovered, was sexually assaulted as a teenager and had an abortion. The aunts, the women running the training (but who, though they have some power, are also subjects of the men in charge), ask the Handmaids in training whose fault the assault was. Her fault the Handmaids chant in unison.

The moment where Offred reveals that in this society two women must testify to the same thing in court since "evidence from a single woman is no longer admissible."

The moment where Offred recalls her mother, who has been either murdered or thrown away to indefinite manual labor, for the crime of being old.

I think about the way things are now; the way women are blamed for their own sexual assaults (what was she wearing?), the way they are routinely not believed when they take their cases to court (she must have wanted it), the way women are cast away by society as they age and lose their (perceived) attractiveness. In our patriarchal society women are valued or devalued based on how men relate to them sexually. Of course there are individual men who value women as fellow human beings. I am lucky enough to know a lot of them. But until all of us and our culture in general can truly value women as people, we will remain one step away from The Handmaid's Tale, and creeping ever closer.

Since I know at least a few of my friends are reading this, a new thing I am trying as a way to close out my posts are some recommendations. This month I've been listening to Pod Save America and Pod Save the People as ways to stay up on the world and stay energized without losing my damn mind. This article in The Guardian does a great job of detailing the misery that Trump's expansion of the global gag rule is inflicting on women worldwide. And for a change of pace, The Big Sick is the best romantic comedy and most beautiful movie I've seen in a while and a good way to forget about this whole mess for two hours.

Is It Feminist: Wonder Woman Edition

Originally published June 9, 2017

I used to say that I only reason I watched sports or superhero movies was for the homoerotic tension. But then I saw Wonder Woman last weekend, and now it appears that superhero movies can be about more than men grimacing soulfully into each other's biceps. Although now that I think about it the first thirty minutes of Wonder Woman were pretty gay. I don't want to spoil anything, plot or jokes, but let's just say that it was pretty much confirmed by the movie that the Amazons are a) sexual and b) uninterested in men. And the film passes Bechdel test, with flying colors, in the first 15 minutes. The only man the Amazons talked about was Zeus, and I'm not sure how the rule applies when it comes to Greek Gods.

But now the question everyone is asking is "Is it feminist?"

First of all, does it have to be? After all, male-led movies do not carry the burden of making a larger statement or promoting progressive politics. In that respect, I was sort of delighted to realize that the movie wasn't particularly feminist. It was just a pretty good, funny, and well-made superhero movie. The commentary on gender that it had was pretty banal and non-radical: a female superhero saved the day, making the men around her impressed, intimidated, and a little aroused. She came, she conquered, she inspired. She despaired about the sorry state of the world, and she saved as many lives as she could. She shared some steamy night-time with Chris Pine. Diana is a "strong female character," who was also allowed to be sexual, emotional, idealistic and at times naive. It was  certainly refreshing to see a woman in this kind of role, and there is a part of me that wants to call it feminist for these reasons, but I am hesitant to, because feminism needs to be a lot more than just women getting to be superheroes. I am fine with just enjoying the movie for its admirable qualities as a movie, and not asking it to dismantle the patriarchy.

I'm sitting in the coffee shop of Powell's Books in Portland as I write this, and a few minutes ago I did my usual procrastination routine: I scoured all the titles in the feminism and gender studies section in the back of the store. I read the introduction to a book by Jessa Crispin, published this year, called Why I am Not a Feminist. Crispin argues that "feminism" has become trendy, mainstream and mellow, so as not to scare men too much with its radicalism, and that it has begun to lose meaning and power. The goal, she argues, is not simply for women to gain some power in the current system (the patriarchy), but to burn that system to the ground, and that this will not happen with our current popular definition of feminism. I plan to finish the book eventually but I can already tell that it will frustrate me. I am hesitant to argue so much about semantics and I am always uncomfortable with women arguing with other women about who's being the best or right kind of feminist. Perhaps I am being naive but I think there might be better uses for our time and energy. However, when I am living in a world in which women's access to health care and bodily autonomy is under direct attack from the government, where the president is a self-proclaimed sexual predator, where women are routinely harassed, raped, and subjected to violence by men, I share Crispin's frustration with #feminism. Wonder Woman was a good movie, and it was fun to see a lady kicking ass, but it's a pretty low fucking bar and we should not be satisfied.

But this is world we live in. This is the first superhero movie directed by or starring a woman ever. When a couple of theaters around the country offered select women-only screenings some men freaked the geek out because, I suppose, they are terrified of female power of any kind. And the movie is successful, critically and commercially, which means that, although some men are terrified of women, attitudes are shifting.

Who would have guessed that a movie directed by and starring a woman would be successful? I mean, I know women are half the population of the entire world, but, unlike men, their experiences aren't universal. How can men be expected to identify with a hero they are also attracted to? Women are for loving, protecting, and fucking, not for identifying with or admiring. Or so says conventional movie-making wisdom. So when I am out at a sold-out show for a female led superhero movie, and standing in line for popcorn in front of me are three very wound-up 12 year old boys (target  superhero audience), I am happy for this moment. The fact that the movie itself wasn't feminist doesn't bother me, because it didn't need to be. There is a lot of work to be done, and Wonder Woman isn't real; she can't fight for us. Regular women need to keep fighting to bring down the patriarchy, but in the meantime we can watch a good movie that for once doesn't ask us to identify with a male person. (Which, for the record, is not that hard to do since humans have imagination and empathy. Men can also use this power to watch lady movies. I know men aren't as practiced at it, but I believe in them.)

Go see Wonder Woman, if you can. Go to give money to the people who made it, to piss off the alt-right, to show studio executives that women-led movies can make money. Or just go because it's a good movie and Gal Gadot is a delightful actress and Chris Pine is pretty.

Go because we all deserve a break to recharge once in a while, so we can do that hard working of burning the patriarchy to the ground. Because here's the situation in America in 2017: we can't have a female president, but at least we have Wonder Woman.

Matriarchy

Originally published May 26, 2017

When I called my Mom on Mother's Day we spent the first few minutes of our conversation talking about a news story she had read about the rise of maternal mortality in the United States. The article said that it was partially due to doctors not paying enough attention to the mother in favor of taking care of the baby. The particular story she had read on the NPR website was about a neonatal nurse who died at the hospital where she worked. Since the doctors and nurses were so focused on the baby, they didn't notice the signs of preeclampsia until it was too late.

This is some insidious patriarchal bullshit. It's the kind of thing that can slip under the cracks, unnoticed as a trend until too many women have died. It's the kind of thing that one can, and many will, argue is not related to sexism at all. I can already hear men who will whine why does it always have to be about that?

But one can, and should, draw a through-line from anti-abortion rhetoric to maternal mortality from negligence to the potential of a full-on Handmaid's Tale women-as-wombs world. Anti-abortion rhetoric argues that women should not have the ability to control what happens to their own bodies, physically and psychologically, and to decide whether or not they consent to the traumatic and potentially life-threatening experience of childbirth. Anti-abortion activists and law-makers love to focus on the fetus, the potential life, at the cost of pregnant person. The real, breathing, not-potential person. And what if that fetus that anti-choicers care so much about is born, and grows into a real-life woman? Then, suddenly, she has less autonomy than any fetus inside of her body. She becomes, in the eyes of some, a vessel.

A baby is not a fetus, of course, and the nurse who my mother read about was a willful participant; she had made the choice to remain pregnant and to go through childbirth. She was probably not expecting to die from a treatable condition at her own hospital, though. I am not saying that the baby shouldn't have been attended to, I am just saying that the mother's life was just as important. Women are more than their wombs.

Perhaps what I am trying to write about right now would come more easily if I had ever been pregnant. I have no desire to be at the moment, not the least because I would have to give up espresso and weed for nine months, but I imagine that the experience would allow me to write about the physicality of it more intimately. I imagine what it would be like often, not because I'm secretly dying to procreate, but because I am fascinated by the experience. It is an experience that takes over ones entire body, is emotionally and psychologically overwhelming, and is, of course, the only reason why any of us are here. For how intensely personal it is, it is both public (it is hard to hide a pregnancy from the world), and absurdly political.

Here is what I know. Only women, or people with female anatomy, can be pregnant. It is physically and psychologically demanding in a way that those who have no experience with it cannot possibly imagine. There is no equivalent experience in a man's life. Pregnancy is (currently) the only way to make new people. Both the physical burden and the potentially rewarding experience, are out of men's control. This, then, is the reason for the politics. It is men scrambling for control over pregnancy, and by extension, society, by attempting to control women and their bodies.

Men are used to being in control. They control everything from Congress to the superhero movies we are all forced to talk about every summer. But men cannot be pregnant. Men can barely imagine what it would be like to be pregnant, which is perhaps why so many of them appear to have so little empathy for the experience, but they know that they owe their existence to a woman who undertook this huge job. Men used to sit in the waiting rooms, worrying and waiting and lacking control, while their wives created new people. Now, you might run into some enlightened young dudes who, along with their female partner, like to use the phrase "we're pregnant." That's cute, I guess, but completely inaccurate. If that phrase is a way to signal to the world that the man is a supportive partner and on board for his share of childcare, more power to him. But he's not pregnant, and everyone knows it. That experience doesn't belong to him, and he is as out-of-control as a cigar-smoking man in a waiting room, or a law-maker trying everything he can to police pregnancy. Men can't be pregnant, and so they pass laws to limit access to birth control, abortion, overall reproductive health, maternal paid leave, and childcare. It makes them feel in control, I suppose, to make women's lives as hard as possible. So here we are. It's a man's poorly governed world.

Have I gone off the rails? Have I started feminist ranting again? You can thank my mother, who bought me feminist children's books and wouldn't ever let me watch Grease because of the terrible messages for young women. (Men, would you please stop trying to control women by telling them they need to fundamentally change themselves and wear leather body suits to be worthy of love? God, she was so right about that movie.)

I was born, via my mother's body and hard work, in a basement apartment in Honolulu, Hawaii. I used to marvel at this choice, thinking that in her apartment with a midwife sounds so much harder and scarier than at a hospital. But after talking with her on Mother's Day I have started to understand the choice. My brothers were all born in hospitals, but my mother told me that she had a doula with her both times, a woman that until that conversation I had not realized was a professional, and not just her friend. It's not that my mother doesn't trust modern medicine (she's a biologist) or individual health care professionals who work hard to ensure women's safety everyday, but perhaps she is wary of the systems that men create, especially those surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. She needed someone there for her, as all women need and deserve.

I will call my mother again soon. I only see her a couple of times a year, at most, and I miss her. I will ask her to tell me more about her pregnancies, and we can talk about the long, creeping arm of the patriarchy. If I ever become pregnant, she's the first person I will want to talk to about it. Whether or not I do ever undertake that, and as I navigate patriarchal systems everyday, be they cat-calling men on the side-walk or the misogynists in the White House, I will be forever grateful for my mother.




A New Level

Originally published May 7, 2017

Last Thursday, the day that the House passed the "health-care" bill that will repeal the ACA and doom us all to early, expensive deaths, my boyfriend came over to find me scribbling madly into my notebook. He stood at the sink and looked out the window while I finished my thoughts before they flew out of my head. Sorry to keep you waiting, I said, I'm just finishing up my feminist manifesto.

I have reached a new level. I am so angry I am giddy. 

After some thought, this is what it must be. These men, the men in power, hate us and fear us so much that they would prefer that we all die quietly. 

(I say us. I mean, essentially, everyone who is not one of them: wealthy, white, cisgender, straight, male. But this bill is personal for all of us, and I speak from my experience, as a woman. But make no mistake, we are all in this together.) 

Or perhaps it is this: if women need Pap smears, or birth control, or STI screenings, or pre-natal care or abortions, it is because we are whores. We deserve to be denied this basic healthcare, because we wouldn't need it, if we didn't whore around.

Or, it's both. It's punishment and it's fear.

They fear us because they know what they've done to us, and they think as soon as we gain any power, we will do the same to them. Perhaps it's because I'm currently devouring The Handmaid's Tale, but I suspect sometimes, that if they could, they would round us all up and keep us prisoners: the walking wombs they imagine us to be. If they would do it, they think we would do the same to them. What they don't know, is that all we want is to be free, and happy, and healthy. To live our lives with dignity. 

My body, these past few days, can feel my rage. I am so angry I feel like a conduit. It's coursing through me and giving me a constant stomach-ache. 

The personal and the political have always beeen one in the same. Politics is, after all, how we decide to structure the world in which we live. To divorce it from the personal is disingenuous--a lie afforded to those with power and privilege. But this one feels extra personal. 

A couple of weeks ago I had abnormal Pap smear. Soon I will have to go back to the doctor to get another test to determine if there are some cancerous or pre-cancerous cells lurking in my cervix. If there are, they will take them out. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing, if you can get your hands on it. I need to get Pap smears annually. I may need someone to get in there, and scrape cancerous cells out. If that doesn't happen, I may get cervial cancer and die. That is not hyperbole. That is one of many things that happens to women when they cannot accces basic healthcare. Those smirking old assholes are congrautating themselves on jeapordizing my life, and most likely, yours too. We all live in these breakable bodies, after all. 

This knowledge, this confirmation, is my new level. They would rather see me dead than living my life as I wish; having sex on my own terms and walking around with my ankles exposed. This is why, when I can, I will relish living my life. I know it makes them angry. My happiness, my freedom, my sexuality, offends and terrifies them. Knowing that brings me joy. 

I try to hold onto that joy; I hold in equal parts with my anger, glowing hotly inside me. 

I know now it is pointless to tell them: I need [the ACA, Planned Parenthood, etc.] to live my life! Without these services I may die or become buried under debt or an unwanted pregnancy! This is vital to my very existence! Because they don't care. That is their objective: they would rather I were not here. 

Well, here I am. I am a pesky, uppity woman whose very existence offends the men in charge of my country. This bill has proven that to me, and I feel a strange joy, a freedom, in knowing this. 

Don’t We All Sort of Hate The Internet?

Originally published April 28, 2017

Years ago I deleted the Facebook app from my phone because I was sick of the infinite scroll. I felt like there were better things to do while inching closer to death than numbly scrolling through Facebook posts of terrible news, think-pieces and baby pictures. But now when I open my phone I just open Facebook in my web browser. My addiction has found a work-around. It's slower and glitchier and I hate it even more, but a fix is a fix.

Technology is great! Science, progress, innovation, etc., etc., I am all for it. I went to a march last weekend to add my voice to the advocacy of science (can you believe that's necessary?) I am not saying that technology isn't great or that smart phones or the interet aren't a boggling human achievement. What I am saying is that sometimes I feel like I am prisoner of my phone. Sometimes I feel a pit of despair swell in my gut when I read my twitter feed.

What I am saying is, that after much consideration, I have decided that I don't want to be a millenial writer. I don't want to tweet, I don't want to create a brand for myself, and I don't want to argue with mysoginists online. I know this, but I know that if I want to write, I must engage with it, even just a little. I have started this blog as a way to force myself to write.

I should be all about the internet. I am 26, I love communication, TV, and social commentary. I am a raging (militant, angry, unapologetic, crazy*, take your pick) feminist. In high school I was once told by the librarian that "maybe I shouldn't step on so many people's toes," after not getting onto the National Honor Society, which he ran, despite being an A student and meeting all the qualifications. I think he was angry with me for once refusing to take my seltzer water out of the library, since the rule was "water only," and my well-reasoned argument is that seltzer water is water and I was not breaking any rules. I am still annoyed about that comment ten years later. Since I am so good at offending men in real life, it stands to reason that I would want to do it online as well.

But the internet, in general, saps my energy, consumes my time in unproductive ways, makes me want to cry when I read certain comment treads. Fuck it. It's vile. We all know that it's vile, and yet we all keep coming back to it.

So, here I am. This is an experiment. I am under no illusions that this is original, but it may be enjoyable. Stay tuned, void. 

*crazy is a mostly meaningless term used by men to undermine the valid emotional responses of women to the horrors of the patriarchy. Do I feel unhinged when I listen to anything that comes out of Mike Pence's mouth these days? It would be crazy not to.