Girl fight! Image: Jenn We all remember the cool girls at school. Unless you went to a boys school. In which case you had a group of cool boys. There was nothing particularly remarkable about these people. In fact it seemed it was their unremarkableness was their strength. The only time they spoke up was to put others down it seemed, making them hard to analyse and infiltrate. Cool is a weird thing. As is bitchiness. Do you remember when a trend overtook Jezebel commenters and it became funny to remark that something made you want to "cut a bitch". Truth be told I can see why this is an awful thing to say but - this truth being told - I have to say the first time I read the phrase "Makes me want to cut a bitch" as a bored intern looking for feminist writing online I had to stifle my laughter. I laughed at a joke in which someone feels an urge to draw blood from a woman. I think if I saw someone witty crack it out again I might smirk a little. Does that make me cool?
I don't want to analyse this flip remark that is an appropriation of frightening behaviour in a safe(ish) space highlighting a certain ridiculousness about it. I do want to talk about how different women deal with their feminist belief in public. Sarah Ditum discussed it in the New Statesman, using Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn's Cool Girl idea to portray a woman who separates herself from other women: "Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don't mind, I'm the Cool Girl."
| The Cool Girl, also known in the '90s as the ladette, is also evidently Lone Girl. Ditum seems to intensely dislike her and Flynn is apparently hostile. Ditum continues: "The problem is that the Cool Girl doesn't do these things because she likes them: they're just the tokens she deploys to show men that she can move in their world without disrupting the gender order, because she respects the man code." | some people just don't fit in anywhere and boys often provide a retreat, whatever your size, diet or penchant for anal sex. |
I don't know how Ditum can possibly know a person's motivations for liking something - but I'm not unfamiliar with a creeping feeling of suspicion when some people make announcements about who they are, particularly when it just happens to be a list of very attractive or accommodating traits. Still, it's preferable to someone who constantly spouts "I don't mind..." Moreover considering those who remain indecisive in order to please, you wonder who exactly is getting shat on here.
Ditum describes her frustration with feminists who identify as sex positive, who discuss porn without an agenda to end it. Her annoyance at women who don't mind catcalling, who explain "That's got nothing to do with men using street harassment to put women down in public, it’s just because feminists have taught you to be afraid". The Cool Girl pisses Ditum off for bringing up whore stigma - only male abusers endanger sex workers. Personally I think we've stepped beyond Cool Girl philosophy, which as I understand it is mostly about being hot, burping and drinking beer with the boys, and creep into what the women with these beliefs call intersectional feminism.
The sad truth is that some people just don't fit in anywhere and boys often provide a retreat, whatever your size, diet or penchant for anal sex. The so called Cool Girl will often tell you she prefers the company of men because, rather than struggling with an apparent man code she escapes women's judgement. Rather than compete she refuses to participate. And that's a problem because we need her voice. So instead of criticising the Cool Girls, or the Women of Colour who say we aren't listening, or silencing trans* women or dismissing sex workers, which we unthinkingly do because we don't relate, we should search our feminist hearts to find what we are doing wrong.
The unfortunate result is that with this Cool Girl slur piece Sarah Ditum unintentionally comes across as not practising the "kindness of feminists" she yearns for.
Squeamish Kate
Ditum describes her frustration with feminists who identify as sex positive, who discuss porn without an agenda to end it. Her annoyance at women who don't mind catcalling, who explain "That's got nothing to do with men using street harassment to put women down in public, it’s just because feminists have taught you to be afraid". The Cool Girl pisses Ditum off for bringing up whore stigma - only male abusers endanger sex workers. Personally I think we've stepped beyond Cool Girl philosophy, which as I understand it is mostly about being hot, burping and drinking beer with the boys, and creep into what the women with these beliefs call intersectional feminism.
The sad truth is that some people just don't fit in anywhere and boys often provide a retreat, whatever your size, diet or penchant for anal sex. The so called Cool Girl will often tell you she prefers the company of men because, rather than struggling with an apparent man code she escapes women's judgement. Rather than compete she refuses to participate. And that's a problem because we need her voice. So instead of criticising the Cool Girls, or the Women of Colour who say we aren't listening, or silencing trans* women or dismissing sex workers, which we unthinkingly do because we don't relate, we should search our feminist hearts to find what we are doing wrong.
The unfortunate result is that with this Cool Girl slur piece Sarah Ditum unintentionally comes across as not practising the "kindness of feminists" she yearns for.
Squeamish Kate
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