First Dates, Personal Essays & The Trouble With Wanting Men

Happy Friday EICers, settle in we've got some problems to solve...this week on the podcast, we’re talking about the problem with personal essays, and the trouble with wanting men.

For The Bookseller, Caroline O'Donoghue wrote a piece titled 'up close and personal: Why are female authors asked to bare their souls to promote their books?'. She writes 'My 25-year-old self wrote about her smear test because she was trying to crowbar her way into an industry that felt like a locked room. Now, at 35, I’m beginning to feel I’m trapped in a room that is locked from the inside.'

Why do we not trust women to be as smart and as interesting story tellers as men, why do we need this level of emotional investment in female writers' lives to buy their work?

Next up, The Trouble With Wanting Men. In a recent New York Times article of the same name, writer Jean Garnett asks what we as women should do with our desire when so many of find ourselves fed up of dating men. And she looks at this through the lens of “heteropessimism” or “heterofatalism” as it’s now been amended to, which is a term that was coined by sexuality scholar Asa Seresin in 2019 in a piece for the New Inquiry. And in this piece Seresin defines it as such “ Heteropessimism consists of performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience. Heteropessimism generally has a heavy focus on men as the root of the problem.” She goes on to discuss how, though sincere, this feeling most often isn’t accompanied by action, as most women who express it, will continue to date men.

We hope you enjoy, as always please do rate & review :) B,R,O xx

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In collaboration with Cue

Ruchira's been loving Friendship

Beth's been loving First Dates

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Why Are Female Authors Asked To Bare Their Souls To Promote Their Books?

Where''s The 'You'? - Naoise Dolan

The Trouble With Wanting Men

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