Maureen Dowdy Ain’t No Broady, and Other Notes From the Feminist Ghetto

I’ve been knee-deep in malodorous manuscripts these last few weeks — for one of my few remaining money jobs, you dig. In the meanhow, speaking of malodorous, I will chime in my (last) two cents on the Dowd Question and, no doubt, surprise no one in the process. For: I never liked Miss Mo and her delusions of screwball-dame grandeur, and now her botoxed puss is giving me the heebie-jeebies as she spews her reductionist, classist, Cathy-cartoon, decidedly un-Great Kate, Catholic schoolgirl-uniform tripe all over the media’s three rings. She is old-school only in negative, dichotomous ways, and I anticipate her self-implosion breathlessly, from the bowels of the back of the classroom. She gives straight-girl feminists a bad name.

On another, deeply related note: I am sick of women distancing themselves from the very term “feminism.” None of us like every action or ideology that lives under its umbrella, but it’s disrespectful and downright ignorant to dismiss the label out of hand after everything the movement has given every one of us.

Last and least lofty: My lesbian boyfriend Yancey was kind enough to purchase for me Season 2 of The L Word. Despite our extended, archived grievances, Jostle and I have learned that the much-maligned season lends itself quite nicely to boozy, woozy heckling. Plus, the girls themselves (Kate and Leisha, in particular) mock the weak storylines and musical choices mercilessly on the commentary track of the “Love Boat” epi. Clearly we missed another boat in momentarily taking the show seriously. Say it loud, say it proud: f-f-f-f-fucking.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy