The Vagina Monologues.

Monologues. About women's vaginas. What could be more confessional than that?

Does TVM harm women? Inquiring minds want to know.

Because no one but morons already sucked into its vortex pay attention.

...between Kathryn Harrison's THE KISS, which goes beyond confessional to deeply reflective autobiography, and the journalistic stories which JEZEBEL criticizes. Those pieces of "journalism" are really nothing more than momentary memes, written quickly, which do seem, to a piece, to exploit a certain car-crash fascination that women have with other women's dissatisfaction. Those pieces invite comparison and objectification, and are written to confirm fears and prejudices.

THE KISS was written in the 90's, a much healthier time for women's writing, I believe. We are truly in a pit here in the 2000's - confronting a country that continues not to provide basic civic necessities as decent public schools in larger cities, and affordable health care for everyone (and yes, these are issues that affect women's lives disproportionately because they are STILL the primary care-givers in most families) and the response has been an endless chain of put-downs for any and all choices we as women make.

Salon's choice to relegate articles about women's issues of all sorts to a secondary location called Broadsheet hurts women.

Women are half of humanity. Broadsheet is an example of how in ongoing subtle (and editorial) choices, our culture makes that a "lesser" half.

Segregation of content and analysis according to gender hurts all.

Or reach a critical mass in a previously- male- dominated profession, then the status of that profession is downgraded accordingly.

Part of that is because women are considered lower-status than men objectively speaking. But also because many women tend to be self-deprecating rather than self-aggrandizing. And that changes perceptions.

So I think it stands to reason that confessional memoirs penned by women would be accorded a lower status than those penned by men.

Yeah...

Ann Sexton and Sylvia Plath often seem a bit too confessional. But, I substantially agree with Amanda. It is impertinent not to listen. Writing is about more than writing. Writing is about hearing yourself breathe. It is... oh, shit... the analogies and metaphors are endless. I have heard mountainous litanies of travail from women friends through the years. Yeah, sometimes I just want to tie my shoes in peace. But, no, it is kinda cool. Women fascinate me with their logic and disjointed narratives.

I suppose perhaps I have caused no little unsettlement myself. So I suggest- do not change what has never worked.

The men who wrote great confessional prose weren't praised because of their maleness or their confessions — they were praised because of the essential truth (as opposed to the "shallow truth" of factual regurgitation) of what they wrote.

Women have also written great works of confessional prose that are equally worthy of admiration (though not always given it). And some of those women are alive and writing today.

But I'm sorry, no, not everyone who writes about themselves writes something worth reading. We are not obliged to read every confession of every blogger or watch every train-wreck of a performance on youtube.

Take the article in Broadsheet from today, about the transexual woman trying to find connection and common humanity between bathroom stalls at some skanky club. It struggles to rise above the lurid pornography of psychic exhibitionism, and finally, poignantly, succeeds.

Now compare that with the smugly self-absorbed "I'm such a bad mother" trend in women's writing documented here recently. (Or the equally, but divergently, self-aggrandizing form that the men's version takes.)

Or the kind of self-consciously posed "I'm so bad, I don't even know how bad I am" posturing that seems to be Jezebel's stock in trade.

Amity is smart.

May I suggest Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino? The avant-garde is enormously populated by women. Iran is an obvious notice. Nothing today is not substantively inflected by appropriate DNA.

Let's us talk about the new novel.

I confess that I have not read all of these letters and apologize if this has already mentioned. All of these "memoirs" were written by Liz Jones. Ms. Jones has longstanding body dysmorphic issues. She removed her breasts so that her clothes would look better. She is anorexic and bulimic. I'm surprised that her year+ long marriage to her abusive husband who "smelled liked cabbage", was chronicled in two newspapers and turned into a book, which was written by him, failed to be mentioned.

This is not a literary trend. Liz Jones is absolutely insane. It just happens that she is the fashion writer for The Daily Mail, (another long, crazy story), who alternates between advocating thin vs. heavier models.

She's nuts. Ignore her.

The Surrender.

Tony Bentley's paean to her anal experiences - a sodomy memoir that is a masterpiece.

From her NY Observer interview:

"Oh my goodness," Ms. Bentley said, with some exasperation. "Basically, feminism is a fantastic thing. Feminism made it possible for me to write this book and have it published, O.K.? That’s the bottom line. Within the scope of things, if feminism means pro-women in every way, I’m the ultimate. But I do not call myself a feminist necessarily. It’s not a label I use."

Alas, it is not particularly more interesting to learn that Ms. Bentley has saved the detritus of her anal lovemaking (with a fellow known simply as A-Man) in "a beautiful, tall, round, hand-painted, Chinese lacquered box." Hundreds of used condoms and K-Y: "My treasure," coos the narrator. One woman’s treasure is another’s trash, honey.

... was it wise for her to write, after A-Man penetrates her for the 220th time, that "I want to die with him in my ass"— for at that point, the reader is tempted to agree.

A tour-de-force of one woman's back door journey on the path to anal pleasure and the empowerment of sodomy.

Brava, ma feministe, brava.

Amanda you are too bright to not take note of the fact that this is THE venue open to women in the majority of press. Pitch : I was gang raped by a 1200lb ram dodge truck and you will be published.

Pitch a story on politics and forget it: the men get those bylines. Do the math.

Tell All is WHAT women are shoveled into.

politics is man, b/c men can put their bias into this, b/c power is at stake.

Write an essay : "I eat 5000 calories at breakfast" and all that brings is derision and the furtherance of female sub-status.

I challenge you Amanda to write exculsively hard hitting politics for Salon. Get them to give you the WAR Room! Send Alex to the bing-eating beat for a while.