I Imagine The Butches’ Stripper Bar By Jill McDonough

the tradwife movement is the same as it has always been - back in the kitchen, back to breeding - it just has better branding.

when i was younger, i hated pink. i was not like other girls. this is now something i'm embarrassed of - this was not me being a "girl's girl."

but it was expressing something many of us felt at the time: i literally wasn't what girlhood was supposed to be. this is a hard thing to explain, but you know when you're not performing girlhood correctly. it isn't as easy as "i liked x when girls liked y" - because there were other girls that liked x, too - but i never figured out exactly the correct way to like x, or to be interested in y.

now there is the divine feminine. this is the same rhetoric it has always been: women are biologically driven to like pink and ribbons and submitting to our husbands.

the problem is that the patriarchy found a better PR team. because yes, actually, i want every woman to have the choice to be a homemaker. i also want her taken seriously for her legitimate home-making labor. i want her to be recognized as also having a job, just unpaid. i want men to have this opportunity, too.

but it is no longer "i made this choice and I love it." instead it is a sixteen-paragraph rant about how selfish it is that my generation isn't having kids. instead it's long videos about how if you feed your children processed foods, you're going to kill them. instead it is "this is what womanhood is supposed to be. i feel bad for any other choices you're making."

the shame spiral is just prettier. it is large houses devoid of personality. it is the implication: if you don't have this, you aren't happy. the solid, everlasting assurance: women are actually supposed to be submitting. this is the default. this is the natural state of things. all other attempts inflict suffering.

but you can no longer say i'm not like other girls. you can no longer reject this image completely. you cannot find it revolting, even if you know that the underbelly is toxic and festering. sure, it is the same repackaged patriarchy. but the internet does not have shades of grey. you should support and reward other women! your disgust is actually internalized misogyny. not because you are seeing a vision of yourself the way they're trying to train you to be. not because you feel her ghost pass within an inch of your earlobe. not because your father will eventually ask you - why can't you be like her?

because they figured out how to make it beautiful: women will sell other women on this idea, and we will find the singular loophole in feminism. sure, she's shaming you in most of her videos. sure, she implies that a different life is obscene. but she just wants you to be happy! you'd be happier if you were listening!

and the whole time you're sitting there thinking: i'd actually just be happier if i had that kind of money.

can’t focus on work. can only think of that one lesbian poem about chivalry

Sylvia Plath, "Love Letter"

cover story by Richard Siken

“Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.”

— Unknown

after the fire by Ada Limón

“Some animals take themselves away to a private place to die, into the forest or under a raised wooden deck constructed of weather-treated pine. Are there animals that seek out the most public place to die, the greatest number of eyes to watch them lie down, roll over, stiffen? Is it true that all living creatures feel the instinct to survive, or are there ones that don’t, only we know nothing about them because they die so swiftly, in utter silence, before they can be seen and recorded?”

You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine - Alexandra Kleeman (2015)

Look at you, Wiping your own tears With the same hands That long to be held

Ayesha Zahra

Naomi Shihab Nye, from Fuel: Poems; “Hidden”

[Text ID: "If you tuck the name of a loved one / under your tongue too long / without speaking it / it becomes blood"]

father by Matthew Dickman