The roasting of earnest Millennials reflects an ancient, intergenerational war of feelings
There’s a moment from college that I remember with mortifying clarity. It was 2002, and I was sitting in a classroom, midway through a course on memoir writing as a form of social justice. This entailed a lot of personal disclosures from my classmates, all of which I found brilliant. Racism, sexism, homophobia; the war, which had recently started and which we vowed to end; the worst president in American history, George W. Bush. These issues concerned us, we cared about them, and more importantly, we were right about them every single time we opened our mouths.
“It’s amazing,” I…
The ‘debate’ over trans student-athletes relies on ancient — and false — ideas about women’s weakness
In the early 2000s, I used to debate feminism with straight men. It’s a losing game, and I don’t advise you to try it, but I was in college, so chalk it up to youthful experimentation. The men I spoke to did not have the most advanced grasp on the matter, and tended to stall out at the “women aren’t worse than men” portion. By saying women were equal to men, they’d ask, wasn’t I really saying women were the same as men? Weren’t there some things men were just better at? I’d ask what they meant, and they’d sputter…
The misogyny that took the down pop icon more than a decade ago still affects countless women to this day
Britney Spears is a contemporary myth. She’s the Girl We Wouldn’t Leave Alone, the all-American blonde who became the greatest train wreck of her generation. …
The rock star abused women for years—but we were so used to pop-culture misogyny that we didn’t notice
When I was growing up in the 1990s, it was a sign of sophistication to like Marilyn Manson. He was the go-to signifier of edginess for suburban white kids, a man who embodied all that was ugliest in the world, but who did it, like, ironically. He sang songs from the perspective of abortion clinic shooters and the Antichrist. He used unredacted n-words and endorsed fascism in his biggest singles. For his fans — and I was very much among them — taking all that in stride, without getting offended, was a way to prove our own cool. Manson was…
As Biden signs new protections into law, anti-trans advocates prepare an onslaught of legislation at the state level
My hormones are prescribed by a doctor at my local Planned Parenthood. Most of my appointments are online, these days, but every so often, I have to come in. When I do, I see the bulletproof glass on the doors, the double and triple security checks that have to be performed before I can enter the building, the legacy of a long history of anti-abortion shootings and clinic bombings. When I walk into the clinic, I think about how many people in this country are just as outraged about gender transition as they are about abortion, and just as willing…
We have seen the enemy, and he is Greg from Accounting
By now, you’ve seen the “QAnon Shaman.” He’s the man who stormed the U.S. Capitol, bare-chested and sporting a set of horns last seen on Hagar the Horrible, and climbed atop the vice president’s seat on the Senate floor to accuse Mike Pence of participating in an imaginary conspiracy to abduct children and drink their blood.
His real name is Jacob Chansley, and he has become the most apt symbol of Trump supporters’ attempted — and likely ongoing — insurrection against the lawful government of the United States. Details about Chansley keep surfacing in the press, each one both hilariously…
A new season of the HBO hit would drag the conversation backward rather than push it forward
Back in the early 2000s, when I worked in a sex toy shop in Manhattan, there was a specific sort of customer they taught us to look out for. She would be in her thirties or forties, slightly more suburban-looking than the average patron, probably wealthy, usually white. She was easy to help because she would always be looking for one of two items: Either the Hitachi Magic Wand or the Rabbit. This would be her first vibrator purchase, and she would ask for these models by name because they had been on Sex and the City.
Ten years after the ‘end of men,’ America has tilted back toward full-blown patriarchy — and it will continue after Trump leaves office
When President Donald Trump phoned Georgia’s secretary of state, commanding him to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results, he quite likely broke the laws of this country. However, to at least one defender, the leaked call constituted an even more serious crime: a violation of the Bro Code.
“A man does not release a private conversation he has with anyone. That’s part of being a man,” wrote right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly in a much-mocked viral tweet. “Democrat, Republican, Trump, anti-Trump, none of that matters. You don’t repeat things said to you privately. That’s simple man code.”
Carey Mulligan’s ‘Promising Young Woman’ debuts in a culture that’s taking a colder attitude toward survivors’ rage
When the trailers for Promising Young Woman arrived last spring, they were greeted with celebration. The movie looked amazing. The script, by Killing Eve showrunner Emerald Fennell, had already earned a ton of industry buzz. And the premise — a sadistic young woman (played by Carey Mulligan) hunts down and torments the people involved in an old college rape case — was impossibly well-aligned with the ethos of the #MeToo era. This was the story of an enraged woman taking down men who had been living consequence-free for too long.
Now, after a series of Covid-19-related delays, Promising Young Woman…
As legal efforts to eliminate trans youth ramp up, we must remember that being trans has always been part of childhood
I came out to my husband as nonbinary on my 38th birthday. It was, by anyone’s standards, a late transition, delayed in part because I’d spent more than a year privately agonizing about whether to do it. So many of the trans stories I’d heard from the media were about rejection, divorce, the loss of family. I had a loving marriage and a three-year-old; I was terrified of being single again or losing my relationship with my child.
I thought I would have to blow up my entire adult life in order to transition, and that thought alone was almost…
Jude Ellison Sady Doyle
Author of “Trainwreck” (Melville House, ‘16) and “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” (Melville House, ‘19). Seen at Elle, In These Times & all across the Internet.
