Vladimir

by Julia May Jonas

they do not know or cannot imagine a kind of world that is not completely and totally guided by a sense of wanting and getting.

My anger is not so much directed toward the accusations as it is toward the lack of self-regard these women have—the lack of their own confidence. I wish they could see themselves not as little leaves swirled around by the wind of a world that does not belong to them, but as powerful, sexual women interested in engaging in a little bit of danger, a little bit of taboo, a little bit of fun.

Complicated

It depends on the way the power was handled, I suppose. Harvey Weinstein made women feel trapped into sexual engagement with him. Did her husband offer something in return - or say that he would deny them something if they didn’t engage?

But talking about sex is the best!

he couldn’t help it.” He winced. Prude. “Couldn’t help it.

Rape culture

“I want to thank you for coming to see me. I’m flattered on two accounts: for calling me a ‘hot lady’ and for the care that you’re extending toward me. It makes me feel hopeful for the future to be surrounded by young women who are as passionate and empathetic as you are.

“We all live and work within structures and institutions,” I told them. “We can’t help it. I work, I live, inside of institutional sexism, racism, and homo- and transphobia, for example. And the difficult thing to understand about these institutions is that we all, however aware of it we are or not, practice sexism, racism, and homo- or transphobia, even if we are female, a person of color, or homosexual or a trans person. And so I’m fully willing to admit that my remaining with my husband—not standing by his actions, necessarily, but simply remaining in relationship to him—may be a product of my own internalized sexism.

my husband and I have had a life together longer than any of you have been alive. And we’ve had agreements, and arrangements, and compromises throughout that time. And challenges. We’re now faced with another challenge. Both a public challenge and a private challenge. I know that you will understand if I beg for your understanding, and respect of my privacy, as I decide for myself, as a hot, brilliant lady, how I will handle my marriage of thirty years. Extending me that courtesy is an act of feminism in and of itself.”

There isn’t much that gets on my nerves like a pseudo-scientific use of the word ‘proven’ when it should be, at most ‘there is strong evidence for’.

The issue is NOT of the trauma of a consensual love affair but of the issue of consent with such an imbalanced relationship. “I will fail you unless…” etc.

she had retreated into what she called “the howl,” which she described as feeling like one has been caught up in a wave—all sound a roar, all vision static, an ache in every part of her body, a wild pain everywhere.

Her suicide attempt hadn’t been at all about him, there was no Medea to it, no grabbing for love, no attempt to get attention, as most female suicide attempts are interpreted, as I had maybe interpreted hers.

No, she had an honorable depression,

Gross

You have to be willfully ignorant of certain truths to be successful, you just have to,

I always think that the difference between a conservative and a liberal is often the lack of nuance in a conservative’s views. This can often come across as ‘winning’ in a discussion, because from a liberal perspective, there are few universal truths so a blanket statement can lead you to being “caught out” and in my experience, you’re rarely listened to in order to explain the nuance. I do know some liberals with viewpoints that lack nuance, however, and critical thinking.

And if she did choose to cook or clean or worry, at least she could maybe do all those things for a woman who understood, not a man who, by virtue of being born with a thing between his legs, had absorbed from an early age that it was all right to sit back and enjoy being served.

I imagined us in a flat in a European city, it didn’t matter which one, so long as the language outside was not English, the murmur of an incomprehensible tongue surrounding us like a curtain of privacy. It would be my flat, with open shelves and a big slop sink and cut-up fruit lying on a wooden slab on the counter.

I really detest this trope of treating Europe as though it exists as a tourist destination or fetishising it as some kind of romantic utopia, in which the locals are useful as backdrop. What would you be doing, buying a flat somewhere and being so resistant to learning the country’s language that the incomprehensibility of it to you is a positive selling point? I know it’s a fantasy, but still.

But you can’t ask someone who feels like a victim, as John most certainly did, to live apologetically. And there it was, that twisted logic. Even as we railed against victim mentality, against trauma as a weapon, we took the strength of our arguments from the internal sense of our own victimhood. John was acting just like the women who accused him. He had been wronged, goddamnit.

“Why are all these white women so obsessed with being female?” asked a blond, female student who never did the reading. “Don’t they recognize their privilege?” When I ventured to say that Chopin, for instance, began writing after being left widowed with six children as a means of support, she shrugged. “But she still walked through the world as a white woman.”

FFS

“I just don’t know why we have to read these whining women,” the student countered, and another, defending my honor, said, “The course is Women in American Literature.” “Women couldn’t vote or get legally divorced at the time Chopin was writing these works,” I said. “They may seem outdated to you now, but—”

The student who had challenged me hurried out of the room, all her bravery gone when she was not performing for her classmates.

Was I like this?

Huh?

Neither is systemic discrimination

“Do you mean John should be forgiven? Or the women?”

Madness