Tiger Beatdown

So, that Laura Bush. She seems like such a nice lady, am I right? With her sensible suits, and her motherly way of speaking, and her affection for the children, and so on, and so forth. She thinks reading and cookies are good! She thinks alcoholism and breast cancer are bad! She is totally fine with that abortion you’re getting, and also will be cool if you marry your girlfriend later!

Wait, WHAT?

Yes, it’s true! Laura Bush has some common sense in her head, it turns out! And she only waited for THE ENTIRETY OF HER HUSBAND’S POLITICAL CAREER, and as long as it took for her to crank out a memoir (including some work with the discreetly credited “Lyric Winik, who helped me put my story into words” — oh, Acknowledgement sections) to demonstrate it! Which is… um, “problematic?” Yes. Let’s just say “problematic,” and save the lengthy explications of how and why for the Atlantic Culture Channel, at this particular juncture.

But it is Friday afternoon, and that is the time when we discuss problems! With G-Chatter in Chief Amanda Hess of The Sexist, and First Lady GChatter Me, of Here! Behold, as we discuss the difference between being a woman and a Lady, outline the first of my many historical fiction projects (with dragons), rue the potential unintended consequences of marrying THE LEAST PRESIDENTIAL-SEEMING DUDE IN THE WORLD, and fixate on the portions of Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife that she must be so sick of people fixating on, my God.

ILLUSTRATION: So, this dude was very probably President James Buchanan’s boyfriend. His name was William Rufus King, he was Franklin Pierce’s Vice-President, and he died before Buchanan was elected. Which is sad. But before that, he lived with Buchanan,  and their relationship was publicly speculated upon and mocked by the press and other politicians (Andrew Jackson, in particular, was a real dick about it). Their correspondence was destroyed by relatives. We do have a letter from Buchanan, after King left for France for quite a long time, that reads, in part, “I am now ‘solitary and alone’, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them.” He speculates that he will have to marry some lady, one who will “not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.” But he never did! He never did marry a lady. He got his niece to do all the First Lady stuff. Buchanan was the first U.S. President to publish a memoir, mostly to insist that history would vindicate him for defending slavery, WHOOPS. And he was the only President not to have a Presidential wife. I thought Laura Bush would like that story!

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So! As you may very well know, by now, this Monday I participated in Harvard’s Rethinking Virginity conference. I talked! I listened! I ate mini-burritos! I Tweeted the whole darn thing, along with many of the other panelists! (Seriously: #rethinkingvirginity. It is a fun hash tag! Look it up.)

The particular panel on which I appeared, of course, was “Debunking the Virginity Ideal: The Feminist Response to Slut-Shaming and Sexual Scare Tactics.” Or, as we were introduced by the REMARKABLY DELIGHTFUL Shelby Knox on the day of the conference, “The Slut Panel!” The ladies I got to be on this panel with: You would, for real, not believe them. Like, Chloe Angyal, who is maybe one of the funniest people I have ever met, and also the most capable of engaging in a spirited discussion of the robotic expressions of Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Or Therese Schecter, who can turn your whole virginity thinking upside down with a word. Or Lux Alptraum, who was our moderator, and can I tell you: Not only is Lux a lovely lady, and very funny, but she moderates panels like Jimi Hendrix played guitar. She knows exactly what to ask, and how to ask it, and when you need to shut up, and she makes the whole thing look  effortless. This panel: I was so thrilled to be on it! (I was also, can I tell you, thrilled to have been described in the Boston Phoenix as “sharp” and to have been quoted in a way that made it sound as if I had points and was not just yelling about Taylor Swift and Tina Fey; I was furthermore thrilled NOT to have been quoted AT ALL in the Harvard Crimson, for lo, I did go off on an extensive tangent re: Brazilians and anal sex before the very eyes and notebook of Alice, the lovely reporter assigned to the story, and also I believe we discussed Penazzling and whether a jewel-encrusted phallus should, in fact, be referred to as “The Dark Crystal.” The reasons for my inclusion in the Slut Panel, I am telling you, QUICKLY BECAME SELF-EVIDENT in that discussion.)

So! On the Slut Panel, we discussed some ridiculous circumstances under which people might call you a slut, in manners overt or covert, or otherwise indicate that they are freaked the fuck out by your sexuality and want you to SHUT IT DOWN right away. They include!

• Having some sex!
• Having TOO MUCH of the sex!
• Having THE WRONG KINDS of sex!
• NOT having the sex, but being perceived as extremely sexy, due to
• Having breasts, or
• Wearing outfits that people think are hot, or
• Wearing makeup, or
• “Conforming to patriarchal beauty standards” (read: Having breasts, wearing outfits that people think are hot, wearing makeup, etc.), or
• Having tattoos? As per Tina Fey. OR,
• Being extremely comfortable with talking about sex (at least ONE of us on this panel thinks this is massively unfair, and also talked about buttsex in front of the Harvard Crimson reporter). OR,
• Being a sex worker. This one freaks out even the sex-positives, we learned. It is like: “Sure, I enjoy porn, and support the rights of others to enjoy porn. But YOU MADE PORN. FLEE FROM MY SIGHT, WHORECREATURE!”
• OR, you know, being sexually assaulted. Yep, some people will call you a slut if you’re sexually assaulted! Or let your rapist go free because they think you’re a slut! This one’s a fucking downer.
• Which is but one of the reasons you shouldn’t call ladies sluts.

Yes, truly, when people are more angry and disturbed by the fact that Bombshell McGee slept with another lady’s husband than they are by the fact that she might be a motherfucking Nazi, Something Is Wrong With Our Society. But there was at least one common occasion for slut-shaming (and virgin-shaming! Because THAT IS A DEAL TOO, we learned) that we did not discuss. It is:

• Being a beloved squeaky-clean tween pop sensation who decides it is time to Reinvent Her Image and Be An Adult Now and releases a sextacular music video as a statement to that effect, possibly involving a Goth-inflected bird costume incorporating a single thigh-high boot.

So: That Miley video! Did you see it? Did you hear the hoopla about it? Did you ever wonder what it means for How We At Once Fetishize and Fear and Seek to Control the Sexuality of the Young Women Today? Because Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I are here, and we are going to help you to figure this issue out! But first, a little light music.

ILLUSTRATION: Can’t be TAAAAAAAMED! Can’t be BLAAAAAAAAAMED! It’s in her DNAAAAAAAAAA! Can’t can’t can’t… Can’t get the fucking chorus out of your head, is what you can’t do. DAMN YOU AND YOUR NEWER, MORE ADULT IMAGE, MILEY CYRUS!

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So, I have this thing where I don’t Write About Writers. Living Writers, that is! I think it is goofy, and boring, and promoting yourself at the expense of someone else in your same field is a shitty thing to do, and I myself am so under-experienced and non-professional and basically bad at everything that I don’t feel qualified to do it, AT ALL, and also, I don’t know what happened to you while you were writing that article or blog post or whatever. Once I wrote something on a very tight (like: “can you have it to us within the hour” tight) deadline while also puking. Unsurprisingly, it was not Didion! Or even, like, Didion’s stupider, less insightful cousin with a blog! And if someone had said anything mean about that article on their own personal blog, I would have booked a plane ticket so that I could come over and puke at THEIR house while THEY tried to analyze gender politics issues in a pithy and concise manner and also I believe that morning I was doing interviews. I have this theory that they would be distracted, too!

So, no. I don’t write about writers, or blog about bloggers. Unless, that is, they make me EXTREMELY ANGRY!

There is a review of And the Heart Says… Whatever by Emily Gould. This review, it is in Time Out New York. I happen to disagree with it! Strongly! I liked the book! (And, for the record, I think any review that runs, “but why didn’t the author write a completely different book, on a topic of my choosing” is sad and like your brain just took a crap all over a Microsoft Word document, for money. No-one wants to hear your fan fiction fantasies, Professional Reviewer!) But that is not what is most relevant here. What is most relevant are my feelings about the little sidebar or underbar or whatchamacallit that ran with it! Here is the text of that sidebar or underbar or whatthefuckever it is, in its entirety:

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