Essay: Woman on the internet

On truth and terror

The most harrowing territory of any online space is, of course, the comment section. Even Substack isn’t safe. In my recent piece, Heart Dogs, one reader is outraged that I didn’t do even more to save an abused dog across the street. After Plums, my lyrical essay on grieving the loss of relationship with my ex-partner’s child, another reader reminds me of the immense abandonment that child must have felt when our relationship failed. But believe me, I already know. 

It’s easy to assign blame to a woman on the internet. We practically make sport of it. I get so many conflicting comments on my Instagram that I wrote a whole poem about it once. 

I’m not interested in being guiltless. I’m a poet, after all, not a patron saint. I've come to realize that if no one is engaging critically with my work then probably no one is reading it. And yet, I’m fascinated and horrified by how our culture seeks to systematically scapegoat women. To correct, mediate, and corral them back into silence. To make them so petrified of getting anything wrong, they stop trying to say anything at all.

The thing is, we love to correct women. To scrutinize them. To remind them they haven’t quite gotten it right. And if they fail, my god, we take pleasure in ruining them. We criticize women for having pristine Instagram feeds, for being fake, getting lip flips and fillers, or wearing too much makeup, but when we see a shred of imperfection, we pounce. 

My therapist tells me her couch is full of women exactly like me. Women who are worried about being too much or not enough. Women who are careful, caveated, unable to express needs without fear of being labeled difficult or dramatic. Most of my life, I’ve measured my food on a scale, and now, when I pick up a potato, I can tell you approximately how many grams of carbohydrates it contains. From girlhood, we’re taught this—to be the counter of calories, calendars, and social cues. The keeper of details, tempers, and of the peace. 

I grew up in a culture where men often interrupted women to correct the terms they used or tweak their  pronunciation regardless if they'd said anything wrong. As I grew older, I realized male strangers would approach me similarly online. This kind of constant policing takes many forms but is often coded in phrases like: have you considered, food for thought, or to play devil’s advocate. But those are the tame comments. More vile are the verbal attacks on my body, being called a “feminazi,” or told I deserve to die. 

In my first teaching position, I remember slipping past a large male colleague in a tight high school hallway and when I squeaked out “sorry,” he pinched me so hard on the arm, it left a bruise. I remember how he laughed and said: That’s for saying sorry when you don’t need to! I was still in my early twenties, but I already knew this lesson— you can’t win. Mostly because the game is built for you to lose. 

It’d be easy to say men are the only cause of the problem. But a deep heartbreak is that it’s women too. Say you want to be thinner and it’s women who will be the first to scream bad feminist. Post a selfie and you’re desperate. Admit you’d like a partner and a small army of women will arrive in your DMs telling you to JUST LOVE YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING IDIOT. 

But what I love most about both poetry and being alive is the ability to feel the human heart. Not that meek, tepid emoji, but the raging aorta with all its strange and complicated thumping. 

Here’s the thing: good writing requires that we are not always the hero of our own work. If we’re always the hero, we probably aren’t telling the truth. And that makes for boring poetry. And for boring lives. And for exhausted women. 

My invitation to you is this: to get terrifying and true. To write yourself not as hero but as human. To wear anger like a serpent draped around your throat and love like a dagger on your hip. To tell the truth of your experience, completely and imperfectly. In all your mighty rage. To know you will be punished and loved and witnessed and whole.  

So, go write. Grow rowdy. Get read.

I love you. Amen. 

What’s been your experience? I’d love to know. Tell me in the comments. <3

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