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Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

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Jia Tolentino

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“Sonnet of Short Dress There is no short dress, only short sight, No obscene outfit, only eyes of obscenity. The world is no man's family heirloom, That it should be cherished by the men only. Instead of restricting a girl's right to expression, Teach boys, short dress isn't a sign of consent. If women cannot walk around freely as men do, Better sentence all men to lifetime imprisonment. Let all girls hear it loud, wear what you like to wear, Walk around naked if that's what you really want. And when an animal makes unwanted advances, Activate your knee 'n crush their beloved balls to pulp. Girls don't need protecting, they ain't fragile showpiece. Let's just raise boys as decent humans, not entitled bullies.”

“Create. Not for the money. Not for the fame. Not for the recognition. But for the pure joy of creating something and sharing it.”

“But when the wave of passion sweeps over her, she does not renounce the brilliant smile of life, she does not hypocritically wrap herself up in a faded cloak of female virtue. No, she holds out her hand to her chosen one and goes away for several weeks to drink from the cup of love’s joy, however deep it is, and to satisfy herself. When the cup is empty, she throws it away without regret and bitterness. And again to work.”

“No one had turned to us and held out a handful of questions: How many ways are there to have the sex of girl, boy, man, woman? How many ways are there to have gender - from masculine to androgynous to feminine? Is there a connection between the sexualities of lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, between desire and liberation? No one told us: The path divides, and divides again, in many directions. No one asked: How many ways can the body's sex vary by chromosomes, hormones, genitals? How many ways can gender expression multiply - between home and work, at the computer and when you kiss someone, in your dreams and when you walk down the street? No one asked us: What is your dream of who you want to be?”

“For women, the boundaries of acceptability are strict, and they are many. We must be seductive but pure, quiet but not aloof, fragile but industrious, and always, always small. We must not be too successful, too ambitious, too independent, too self-centered—and when we can’t manage all the contradictory restrictions, we are turned into grotesques. Women have been monsters, and monsters have been women, in centuries’ worth of stories, because stories are a way to encode these expectations and pass them on.”

“In much of the western world, the general effect of the 1980s has been to move back the feminist gains of the 1960s and 1970s. It has encouraged a style rather than a politics of resistance, in which an expressive individualism has taken the place of collective political challenges to power. And in the process it has de-politicized gender by de-politicizing feminism. The new gender outlaw is the old gender conformist, only this time, we have men conforming to femininity and women conforming to masculinity.”