The Bluestocking, vol 111: Weird crushes and boffo openings

Happy Friday!

This week, I wrote a piece about the "manosphere" - the anti-feminist internet - and how it acts as a gateway to the far right. It starts off with "men are under threat" and slides into "the West is under threat". Several gentleman correspondents have been in touch to say that "female intellect is an oxymoron", but apart from that it's had a pretty positive reaction.

That's interesting in itself, because (as I say in the 2013) the early 2010s were marked by a total refusal to take online sexism seriously, because "it's just the internet". In the intervening time, people have realised that "it's just the place that some users spend eight hours a day" or "it's just the place I buy my food, my clothes, talk to my friends and watch hours of guitar tutorials" is not as reassuring as it sounds.

Helen

The Crane Wife

Not long before I’d called off my engagement it was Christmas.

The woman who was supposed to be my mother-in-law was a wildly talented quilter and made stockings with Beatrix Potter characters on them for every family member. The previous Christmas she had asked me what character I wanted to be (my fiancé was Benjamin Bunny). I agonized over the decision. It felt important, like whichever character I chose would represent my role in this new family. I chose Squirrel Nutkin, a squirrel with a blazing red tail—an epic, adventuresome figure who ultimately loses his tail as the price for his daring and pride.

I arrived in Ohio that Christmas and looked to the banister to see where my squirrel had found his place. Instead, I found a mouse. A mouse in a pink dress and apron. A mouse holding a broom and dustpan, serious about sweeping. A mouse named Hunca Munca. The woman who was supposed to become my mother-in-law said, “I was going to do the squirrel but then I thought, that just isn’t CJ. This is CJ.”

Everyone is recommending this piece, and rightly so.

Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid

It was pure joy to see my friend after so long. Just laying eyes on him made me glad; he had grown a Freddy Mercury mustache and was wearing a weird child’s size sweater and I loved every inch of him. Out of our mouths flew sentences too fast to filter, so desperate were we to tell each other everything, to make clear what had happened in the last ten years. I found myself, as I crammed my thighs into my shapewear, saying, “Oh, well, I love my husband, he is the perfect man for me and it was love at first sight, but I would never willingly enter into this state of servitude again.”

I had not known that I felt that way until I said it. It frightened me that I said it. That night at the party, I kept thinking about it, and on the flight home, I kept thinking about it, and no matter how I looked at that phrase I couldn’t make it any less true. If something disastrous were to happen and my husband were to leave me or die or simply vanish, I would never remarry. I actually cannot imagine even dating another man. Part of this is out of intense loyalty to my husband, but part of it is because the idea of cooking some idiot man dinner for the rest of my life makes my skin prickle with rage.

A chaser.

Can Elizabeth Warren Beat Trump At His Own Game?

All of this raises a thorny question: Is Warren prophetically right or tragically wrong? For many Democrats, her decision to throw caution to the wind and run on a full-dress liberal agenda of vaulting ambition—dragging the whole party along with her—is both thrilling and scary. It offers the promise of an historic advance and a rebuke of Trump and all that he stands for, but couples it with the possibility that vowing to raise taxes and eliminate private health insurance might frighten voters into delivering the one thing Democrats fear most: four more years of Trump.

In terms of marrying policies to a vision, Elizabeth Warren is the most impressive politician to come along in years. She's like Ed Miliband, but good. Whenever she talks about wealth inequality and financial regulation, she brings it back to things people can connect with - her own story of juggling work and kids, or "why would you buy a toaster with a one in five chance of blowing up?"

Self-Indulgent

I don't know if you saw The Observer last weekend, but there were the most gorgeous photos in the colour supplement of Will Self, his three children and his wife, the journalist Deborah Orr. Taking a tip from Tony Blair, perhaps, this was a serious re-branding: no more the junkie stud, instead the funky dad. Rugged Will, blonde Debs, sun-kissed boy and girl kiddies, and gorgeous, bouncing baby - they resembled what an advert for Sunny Delight might look like if Sunny Delight decided to aim itself at people who holiday in Kerala and know what "frottage" means.

I felt there was something odd about these photos, and I kept gazing at them looking for clues. It took two days of puzzling over them before I tumbled: though he looked as certifiably, teeth-grindingly sexy as ever, I was free. For the first time in 10 years, I didn't fancy Will Self!

You know when people say "how did this get published". WELL. All such pieces quail before Julie Burchill expending thousands of words in 2000 over how she's horny for Will Self.

Quick links
1. I always enjoy a Noel Gallagher interview.
2. On which note, the 1997 Vanity Fair article which accompanied their Cool Britannia cover is genuinely insane. It features the phrase "boffo openings", for a start. 'Tony Blair's Labour Party has clung chiggerlike to the sympathetic statements of Noel Gallagher of Oasis and his putative rival, Damon Albarn of Blur, and has even pondered arranging a "summit" photo in which the pop stars would pose above the caption "The only thing they hate more than each other is the Tories."' God, I want to write the 2019 version of this: "This is what it's like in London now. Everywhere you go, some young sharpie with friends in the art world and a rack of Paul Smith suits has plans."'
3. This Tom Peck sketch about Dominic Cummings. "vanguard and as yet sole member of the gilet noir movement" made me HOOT. Shame the Independent website actively repels attempts to read it.

Guest gif: this is the crane pose, yoga fans

See you next time!