Keep on Writing, Lady Writers. Also, If You Like Contraception, Find a New Place For Your Hobbies

Screencap via YouTube.
If you’re a woman with a uterus who likes to control said uterus, or a person of any gender who supports women’s reproductive rights, you need to never work in/step foot in a Hobby Lobby—an American retail chain that appears to specialize in silk flowers and picture frames—again. That’s because a pack of Christians determined last week that another pack of (particularly wretched) Christians has the right to deny contraception to women. A complete lack of basic scientific wherewithal was exhibited by all, obviously.

And the other thing you need to know about this week is that men aren’t done masturbatorily blathering about young women’s literary successes. So without further ado:

Screencap via EdRants.
Edward Champion Does Not Know What’s Going On In The World

Unless you enjoy reading overlong, woman-hating articles, you may not have heard that some guy named Edward Champion wrote a long-ass opinion piece bashing so-called “middling millenials.” It is, in essence, a thoroughly misogynistic denial of the importance of women’s writing.

The edrants.com blog is a poorly formed, ranting, impossibly hateful epistle no fewer than 11,000 words long. Don’t worry, I read the whole thing so you don’t have to. It took me an entire afternoon to force myself to finish it. I made 100 trips to the fridge, shopped for shoes, did my brows, wrote a bit, and read at least 20 other articles before I could get to the end.

The thing is blatant woman-hating vitriol. Champion attacks “largely white women” between the ages of 25 and 33 (with “some of the more pathetic specimens” being closer to 40), accusing them of confusing “the act of literary engagement with coquettish pom-pom flogging.” He repeatedly refers to women’s writing as being trivial, banal, ignorant, or all three—alongside repeated accusations of narcissism. Essentially, Champion says, women shouldn’t write about their lives or write in any way Champion himself doesn’t relish. He goes so far as to define what “real” feminism is (I’m sorry?), and what a “real” writer is.

But he focuses the majority of his “critique” on Emily Gould. He chastises Gould for having the gall to name her blog and company after herself (gauche! attention-seeking! self-centred!). He calls her a “dim bulb [who] believed that she was entitled to everything,” “a mangy dog,” and one of her books a “heap of shit.” He rips on her for thinking herself to be “extraordinary.” He critiques her choices of romantic partners by calling her past relationships “a string of careerist bedhopping.” (Champion’s own partner is also a writer). It doesn’t make much sense until we learn the whole thing is personal—Gould wrote something about Champion that Champion didn’t like. Further, he has yet to write a book, while Gould has written three. Could somebody be a wee bit jealous?

There is no mention of men’s work he finds mediocre. Only women’s. He calls lady millennial writers “disproportionate tadpoles” who “must ‘have it all’ and announce their hyphenates, even when untrue. Thus, unremarkable people believe that they should be the center of attention, presenting themselves as superheroes committed to supererogatory tasks.”

Excuse me? Why aren’t they remarkable? Because you don’t find their work relates to you? Guess what? It doesn’t have to. Quite ironic that a piece aiming to shed light on narcissism in the literary arena should include such pronouncements, and such a lofty opinion of its own author.

Gould is not the only attractor of Champion’s ill-directed ire. He calls another woman “a dumb-as-dirt, insufferable publicist” and a “thoroughly mediocre woman in her early thirties isn’t chirruping like a red-billed quelea who doesn’t understand that 1.5 billion other birds are twittering the same tune.”

These run-on ramblings are little more than tirades of sheer envy. Is there a lot of narcissistic crap on the internet right now? Yup. Overt preening and bragging is thinly veiled as “personal branding,” and thoughtlessly using someone for their connections is masked as “networking.” It’s ugly. But women aren’t the only perpetrators of said ugliness, and no matter how much Champion may hate young female success stories, he certainly can’t take away their right to write whatever the fuck they want about their own lives and experiences. They might seem naval-gazing to Champion, but the truth is women’s stories haven’t been told for far too long. And now that they are, the menz don’t like it.

Let this be known: women’s stories are stories worth telling, and they need not be legitimized by men. Our experiences don’t need to be told in such a way as to be backed up by research. Living life as a woman is research enough. Women are writing personal pieces about breast feeding, race, and class relations—their own relationships with their bodies, challenging media, love, and, yes, feelings.

Gould herself offers the perfect counter to Champion in a 2008 essay whose apparent “trite” ness Champion, self-identified gatekeeper of all that is worthy in media, could not believe was published by the New York Times:

“At some point I’d grown accustomed to the idea that there was a public place where I would always be allowed to write, without supervision, about how I felt.”

She writes about past entitlements, which she says are now humiliating for her, in the same essay. But she is right: she is allowed to write, without supervision, about how she feels. The bottom line is, Champion is jealous of Gould and others like her, even as he (weakly) claims not to be. Case in point:

“A true cri de coeur should come from the knowledge that irredeemable scumbags like Emily Gould are not only rewarded for pushing honest heads under the water and fucking the right people, but are lavished with the kind of media attention incommensurate with their middling abilities.”

Who, I ask, is the real “torrid hoyden hopped up on spite”? In a word: if you do not like to read confessional, autobiographical, personal essays of this ilk—don’t read them. If you are jealous, maybe stop polluting the internet with such negative novels about others’ style of writing and hone your own style.

Oh, and Champion? “Middling Millenials?” It’s

never going to happen. Screencapture via YouTube.
Stop Having Premarital Sex and Praise Jesus Instead, Lady Slut Bags!

In Washington last week, the Supreme Court ruled that insurance coverage for contraception doesn’t apply, provided a woman works for a corporation run by a family of hyper-religious assholes. Their line of thinking? The family’s religious freedom needs to be protected, first and foremost.

And some companies, like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Store, believe forms of birth control like IUDs and emergency contraception (such as Plan B) are essentially abortion, because they prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus.

It scares me that people this stupid are not only moving around on the planet doing things like operating heavy machinery—they are influencing the highest decision-making bodies to dictate women’s health and well-being, in 2014.

Under the Affordable Care Act, contraception should be covered. But the 5-4 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision is spurning the importance of women’s rights and freedoms for religious rights and freedoms, wading into seriously dangerous territory.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the justices to vote against, and she made a fierce dissent:

"It bears note,” she said, “in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month's full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage."

But, though there were three other dissenting justices, she may have been the only sensible voice in the room. The decision, authored by Samuel Alito, reads:

“Any suggestion that for-profit corporations are incapable of exercising religion because their purpose is simply to make money flies in the face of modern corporate law.”

Wait, what? Corporations don’t exercise religion. People do. And if you own a company, but don’t want to control your reproductive functioning, then good on you! Remain a virgin until you are wed, and then, only fuck to procreate. Perfect. But don’t foist your extremism onto your innocent employees who know what’s best for them, hmmkay? Because someone else’s use of contraception doesn’t actually affect you in any way.

As the Guardian’s Jessica Valenti puts it: “…let's be clear: While Monday's US supreme court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby was officially about religious freedom, the real issue at stake is sex—namely, if women should be able to have it as freely as men.”

If you’re as mad about this as I am, check out this hilarious list of cheap and easy birth control options you can purchase at Hobby Lobby, as detailed by New York, to cheer you up. Or, this list of other laws which, given this preposterous decision, could be just as easily fucked with. Or, if you’re more auditory, here is the glorious Ginsburg’s dissent in song.

All I know is I will never, ever be purchasing so much as a pack of embroidery floss from these extremist maniacs ever again.  @sarratch