3 Comments

Thank you for this, this really resonated with me. Between the Ezra Klein Show and The Daily, I'm like...do these guys not understand this is not an "election defined by gender" but rather one in which it's decided whether women get to live or die?! They treat it with such a light, abstract touch as though it's all philosophical that I feel, sorry to use the word, gaslit.

Your post and others this week are helping me keep my sanity. This felt really meaningful to me today, both in terms of why I read and why I write: For Rich, the constant political and personal denial of women’s realities is why we write. “Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

Expand full comment
author

Oh Lane, I really relate. Sending hugs and nodding my head in solidarity. I think it is abstract for men, you know? Meanwhile we're feeling it at every level of our bodies and being. This note means so much to me, too, because I feel pretty frozen (and crazy!) right now, but felt like this conversation really hits on so much of what we're up against. Glad you saw and felt it, too.

Expand full comment
founding

I really loved this conversation and just bought the novel. I just wrote a flash piece of CNF very connected to these ideas, especially the idea of women supporting each other in the face of male violence. But also, while reading I was thinking a few things about wellness: 1) how we are sold individual solutions to structural problems and we can basically choose between wine mom or wellness (or both!) 2) how sobriety in this culture can sometimes feel a little bit like madness (I know so many people who say they are surviving election anxiety via booze) 3) how wellness is devalued because of the association with the feminine and then 4) how our participation in wellness frames us as mad since we are supposed to know it’s a bill of goods. But also, every time I buy snacks from Trader Joe’s, for example, I think some form of this: “But on a very base level I need little treats to get by, and instead of booze and cigarettes, you know, I love a bubbly probiotic elixir, so be it.”

Expand full comment