"A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance."

Subheadline for a New York Magazine article titled, "If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More?" The teaser title on the front page is "Do Straight Women Really Exist?" The author of the article is Jessica Bennett.

“In this class, we’re going to flip the script,” [said sociologist Jane Ward to her students on the first day of class]. “It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.”...

Flipping the script is a good approach to studying the topic, and the topic is worthy of study. However, I don't like being directed to "worry" or "feel sympathy" or "be allies." I'd look at the subject head on. But neutrality is cruel, and women want to present as empathetic. 

The online world seems to get weirder and more retrograde about heterosexuality every day. Idealized masculinity has become more aggressive, more jacked up, and also more high maintenance... while femininity gets ever “softer,” more nurturing and domestic, and somehow still more sexy....

"This sense of court as theater, and the attention Ms. Brourman’s approach has garnered her, has not always sat well with her colleagues."

"They were dubious of her at first.... Was it possible to be women in their line of work, one that has seen so many men on trial for doing many bad things to women, and not bring themselves into it even slightly? 'I think we are so focused on trying to get these drawings down and done,' Ms. Williams began, 'that our personal female view is like …' She trailed off.... The world is often male by default; politics and the law even more so. There is something unique, even fun, in knowing that this little corner of the universe.... has been so thoroughly taken over by the female gaze that the women themselves don’t even notice."

Writes Jessica Bennett, in "'Accordion Hands' and 'Caterpillar Eyebrows': Trump Meets the Female Gaze" (NYT) — an article about courtroom artists who are female.

I'm not sure what enlightenment this article has garnered me. It seems that the writer went looking for feminist material but couldn't pry it out of these artists who — obviously — have a professional interest in maintaining a reputation for neutrality. They draw what they see. That's what they must say. They're not going to help the NYT have "fun" with the idea that they are women getting back at "many men on trial for doing many bad things to women."

"I don’t want to be a girlboss. I don’t want to hustle. I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and..."

"... enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art and loving myself and the people in my life."

Said some woman on TikTok, quoted by Jessica Bennett in "The Worst Midnight Email From the Boss, Ever" (NYT). 

Bennett — who hates that Elon Musk email telling workers to be "hard core" — concurs:

Honestly, yes. “Hard core” is a bygone era of management... [W]e’ve now got plenty of other, soft-core interests to replace it. How about a workplace modeled on cottagecore, in which we just flutter around in forests and forage for mushrooms instead of hovering over Slack? Or cabincore, in which we huddle in cozy flannel (comfycore) in front of a fireplace instead of being warmed by the glow of our screens?...

Maybe what we are witnessing with Twitter’s mass exodus — and the general antiwork sentiment in general — is a labor revolt “in real time,” as one Twitter user put it....

I'm so glad I have a "moss" tag to use for this... especially since, as I was in the middle of writing this post, Meade came in and announced that the moss he'd planted for me last summer was taking hold. And he saw a mouse on the moss — a moss mouse. How cottagecore is that?!

"Whatever you think of Ms. Heard’s actions, or whether you choose to believe her, this is a good old-fashioned public pillorying — only memes have replaced the stones...."

"[T]his trial could function as a case study in contrived stereotypes used to discredit women, even if you believe there is some truth behind Mr. Depp’s claims. Ms. Heard has been portrayed as mentally unstable, hysterical, a gold digger, a temptress who brought home other paramours at all hours of the night, a freeloader who moved her friends into Mr. Depp’s many houses, an attention-seeker with an unquenchable need for drama and of course an untrustworthy liar — textbook undermining strategies, each with its own sexist implications.... Whether you believe Ms. Heard or not, watching a woman excoriated in public has been popular entertainment since the Middle Ages. Somehow, Ms. Heard seems to have become a stand-in for every evil, lying woman getting her comeuppance — alpha queen bees in high school, the girl who slept with your boyfriend or girlfriend, every manipulative ex. She is Eve, she is Medusa, she is Lady Macbeth. She evokes vamps and vampires, wicked stepmothers, witches.... This trial seems to have exposed some of the rhetorical weaknesses of #MeToo. 'Believe women'... had somehow morphed into 'believe all women'... The intent of that early slogan was, in part, to encourage the public to treat women who speak up with basic dignity and respect, however messy and imperfect they or their stories may be...."

Writes Jessica Bennett, in "The Humiliation of Amber Heard Is Both Modern and Medieval" (NYT).