Everything Is Content - First Dates, Personal Essays & The Trouble With Wanting Men

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

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 xxAND please vote for us in the British Podcast Awards listener nominations hereIn collaboration with CueRuchira's been loving FriendshipBeth's been loving First DatesOenone's been loving Jurassic World RebirthWhy Are Female Authors Asked To Bare Their Souls To Promote Their Books?Where''s The 'You'? - Naoise DolanThe Trouble With Wanting Men Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything is Content, your one-stop shop for culture, celebrity news and topical moments. From TV to TikTok, we've got you covered. We'll be extra time bringing you the most biting moments on the pitch of content. This week on the podcast, we're talking about the problem with personal essays

and why women are giving up on men. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Everything is Content Pod and make sure you hit follow on your poor ghost player so you never miss an episode. What have you both been loving this week? So I went to the cinema by myself on Sunday and had the best time, I need to keep doing this, I keep forgetting how good it is,

I saw the film Friendship. Have either of you heard of this? No. Tim Robinson and gorgeous, gorgeous face and never aged. Yes, I've heard of this and I've been dying to watch this, but live in the middle of nowhere. I'm planning to watch it next week.

Is it worth it? Will I, will I love it? I honestly think this is right up your street. I think the humour is exactly your boat. Your boat? Okay, cut that. It's up my boat, yeah. It's up your boat. It's so, it's so awkward. It's revolting in that awkward humor type of way

where you want the ground to swallow you up. Tim Robinson, if you haven't seen his Netflix sketch show, is just the king of ridiculous, absurdist humor that really plays on what is, you know, you're not meant to do in social situations. And it's disgusting to watch, but it's so entertaining. And essentially it all kind of posits the question, what if one social interaction that went wrong could ruin your life? So deeply triggering, but deeply hilarious.

This sounds so good. And also I went, because do you know what, I did the same thing? I really wanted to pick a mix the other day, which is like a really common occurrence in my household. And I thought, where can I source pick a mix at the cinema? so I took myself to the cinema up but instead of making a great choice like you that film sounds so good

I watched the new Jurassic Park which was so bad no why was it bad because I stand Jurassic Park I'm not going to lie to you so do I and I thought that the last one was really good but that it was what was good was the jumpy bits were really jumpy I think jumping in the cinema is really good for your nervous system

I feel like it's like doing a cold board to plunge it kind of does something so that was good and I just thought that the writing was just this It was so cheesy. But is it always cheesy? Yeah, I don't know. I didn't love it as much as last time.

But our favourite actor from Wicked and, what is he called? Jonathan Bailey. He's great in it. Our favourite. What's his name again? Man, we love him. Can I ask Jurassic Park? And then I want to ask more about friendship.

Jurassic Park, what's the conceit of this film? Because surely they've run out of, like, leg room. Surely they've run out of what, road, that's what I mean. Surely they've run out of road on the whole premise. Wouldn't they close the park down at this point? Why is there more parks? So basically they have. No one really gives a shit about dinosaurs anymore because we've had them for ages.

They're like at the right at the beginning there's one that's just like escaped from somewhere and it's dying in the middle of the road and all the traffic in New York is like, oh, get out the way. So everyone's kind of losing interest in them. But there's this like remote island where years ago there was a big kind of lab where they were trying to mix breeds of dinosaurs to create that hybrid dinosaurs. But then one escaped and now it's like extreme. dangerous, but the dinosaurs also, most of the ones in the wild can only survive, because it's kind of about climate change, can only survive in certain parts of the equator. So then there's Scarlett Johansson, this other actor man who you'll know who he is, but I can't

remember his name, and Jonathan Bailey go off to this like secluded island because they believe that they can create some kind of cure for heart disease or cardiovascular illnesses by extracting the blood of these three different dinosaurs it's quite it's it's a lot about like public health care and climate change it has a lot of quite good messaging throughout and the dinas there's a tiny dinosaur that really reminded me of astrid which was my favorite part because it's kind of like a baby dog but yeah there's no parks anymore I don't know it just wasn't as I was actually really buzzing I got myself a large sweet and salty popcorn and a large pick and mix and it just wasn't that good but please do tell me listeners if you loved it

maybe I'm Silicon or Sally what have you been loving Beth so I have been loving first dates on Channel 4 which is a show I used to love so much years ago I actually really wanted to go on it and I applied to go on it or I got a DM about going on it and I was like obviously not but now I'm like what would have happened

but I'm watching the new series I think we're like four episodes in and actually I'm right back in that I love it so so much I mean it's quite obvious I think even if you've not heard of the show what it is but for anyone listening maybe they don't have it in another country or you're a baby I don't know it is just a lovely British reality TV show where two people are matched made and it seems like they're match made really really well like it seems like the process is

really thorough to matchmake these people and then they go on a cute dinner or lunch day at a restaurant I think the first however many series were in London and now this series is in Bath in this cute restaurant and it's just so sweet. we, although there's not as many success stories as I want. I understand that's just a part of the premise. You can't perfectly match everyone. But I love it when they have a really good day and then they're both really shy and they ask, do you want to see each other again?

And they're both like, yeah. But all too often this series, they've been like, yeah, but as friends. And it just, it breaks my heart because edited in such a way to make you think, oh my God, I'm watching two soulmates meet. And then one of them's like, I just didn't feel the spark. And I'm like, you're going to, you should feel the spark. I'm going to come in that room and I'm going to smush her head together

and you're going to feel the spark because I really need to see love and romance but it's so sweet and I kind of can't believe I forgot this show existed and was so important to me I forgot I used to watch this religiously and also speaking of sparks

a light bulb has just gone off I'm going to apply to be on first days yeah you should oh my God please this is what I should do they have quite a few internet personalities on there they have like people I mean they have lots of people

with very sad stories very inspiring stories and then there's a few people that I've recognised from social media and they had India Willoughby on they had I forget her name Michelle someone she is like a Michelle Alman yes dating coach life coach author and she was on there and it was just I was like oh I was thinking actually I know you would be fantastic on this what are you like on a first day actually I know only before I hype you up too much you embarrass yourself it's so funny I was talking about this with my friends I'll start at the pub because I have haven't got on a first date for ages but my problem with dating when I last time I was single

was I never thought I had a bad date because I was just first of all I like getting dressed up and drinking wine so I was already like like in I was like great this is a great time then I spend the whole time sort of performing I'm doing like a hybrid of coquettish behavior mixed with you know a bit of stand-up comedy and waiting for their reaction and I'm not once thinking about whether or not I find them attractive are they interesting have they asked me a question all I'm waiting for as like a performance review from them. So it's kind of like I'm doing a show. It's an audition, is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, I'm auditioning, which I need to stop doing. Because I should be thinking, like, are they? It's more like the, I like them if I think they think I'm hot and funny, rather than like if they've actually brought anything to the table. Well, I mean, inevitably they will. Yeah. Hype squad assemble. But yes, I can imagine you're a cracking good time.

You just need to just, yeah, slow down and think, who's this person to me? And you've got to show some of your worst bits on first date. I'm convinced of that. I'm convinced you have to drop a few. Not big ones. Not like, do you love me even though I'm like this? But you have to kind of, if you are like a really obsessive person or if you're kind of messy, you've got to let those things land on the first day.

Just test the water. Really, I don't let those out until at least three months in. And then all ones. I'm holding in for three months. Jeez. Must be exhausted. I act like I'm really never messy. one day they come around it's like a bomb site and it's too late they love you yeah that's exactly

that's what you've got to do get them to fall in love and then you reveal surprise my mission now is to get you on first dates channel four if you're listening we've got a we've got your staff for next series the thing is yeah it would have to be a good date because the problem is it is only one person it'd be fun if it was like first speed dates oh the bachelor the bachelorette you should go on that show i think that that's always quite evil vibes. I think what you said Beth is right about first dates is it's actually really kind. It's probably one of the only reality TV shows I would consider. I feel like the bachelor's often got quite and the bachelorette quite dodgy undertones. I don't know if you agree with that.

I haven't actually watched it to be honest. All I know is the premise. So I don't know what the tones are. Is it just very competitive? Yeah, it's kind of like, it's very competitive. I think the contestants are invited to quit their jobs, spend loads of money to travel out there. The edit is brutal. They always have a villain. In the UK one, they had to spend some Matthews as the bachelor one year, which I found very funny at the time. That's awful. I forgot about that. And it was all very staged.

And all the contestants were like, yeah, it was never in it for the love. Whereas I think first dates, it's about the love. It's just ordinary people. They had, I mean, this maybe is a couple of series back. They had a 22 year old girl who was, I think she was about eight months pregnant and she went on a date with a lad. And it went really well and they had this little smooch. And I was like, actually, this is not being mined for like, shock, horror.

Look at this. As it would, I think in an American show. it was very much like, I'm an ordinary girl, I want love, and also I'm growing a baby. And then they went on a second date. I thought it's really sweet. That is really sweet. You're right. It is about the love.

Yeah, also on The Bachelor, I think I'd be too insecure because also they're inevitably like fancy, like more than one of you. I know, I meant you're the centre. Everyone's orbiting you, like several men. Oh, yeah. You're the Bachelor at. Oh, I see. Like a gang bang.

A love gang bang, yeah. A love, that's what I need. That's what I was thinking. Netflix, if you're listening. Jennifer, Netflix. Oh, I see. Okay, fine. Any production companies.

Oh, while we're here, actually, I really want to go to Oasis if anyone is listening. Also, me for Lady Gaga at anyone and everyone. Beth, anything. I know, not really. I want one of those light therapy masks. Oh. So, you know, I have that.

Okay, brilliant. We've put in our shopping list. By the way, listeners, we have no prior experience of anyone giving us anything because of the show, but it's worth the go. We've got some hot chocolate. once in some socks um and only what have you been loving this week oh yeah i already tell us you but you weren't loving it you weren't you said it was shit loving drastic block is that it no that was my thing i'd be loving oh sorry does that not go out no that's fine oh i've also been

i've finally started i've remembered where i got to in hacks and i've been watching this is the 50th time we've recommended it i'm so obsessed with that it's good though if you haven't watched it yet now's the time. I also, okay, one last thing then. I did, I finished because I did it for Book Club Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Read. It was such an interesting one for Book Club because it is obviously like quite commercial fiction that when you dig into it, you can find lots flaws. But even the most critical readers who are big literary fiction fans could not deny the tear jerker ability of this book. And I think it's a real good one if you're in your feelings and you're feeling anxious or a bit down or just a bit existential. It's got something

something special that does make you feel, oh, it doesn't really matter. We're only little specks on a tiny planet. So recommend atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Street. Is that enough for Beth? That is plenty. Thank you. You've done your homework. Had enough, Beth.

And one final thing, if you've loved what we've been talking about or any of this chit-chat, please, please, please, could you nominate us for this year's British podcast awards? we would love, love, love to be part of the remit. So all you have to do is basically type our name in on the website, nominate us and confirm us in the email that you'll get. We'll add the link to the show notes. Thank you. Thank you.

You remember what being 25 in 2015 was like. Or if you don't remember because you were some other age, you remember being told what it was like. You remember because we were constantly telling you. writes Carolyn O'Donohue for the bookseller in a piece titled Up Close and Personal Why a female authors ask to bear their souls to promote their books?

She writes that this has changed for a while but now the stakes have been made quite clear if we would like to write a piece promoting our work, it must be personal what was once inferred has now become explicit it doesn't even seem to really matter whether the theme of the book matches up to the theme of the essay.

The active confession itself written in a kind of elegeic style that conveys vague hurt and wrongdoing is enough. It's such a goddamn perfect piece. I'm conscious I'm close to quoting the whole thing, but I'm just going to do a bit more. There's another gorgeous line that says, sunlight darts through the sleeves of a ritz-o dress as our hero daintily confesses her sorrow, photographs somewhere around Hampstead, which is just so evocative and I can absolutely see that piece. She then goes on to say, most writers don't really want to write about their lives.

They want to write about their ideas. Or rather, they want to communicate their outlook, and sometimes that contains their personal lives, and sometimes it doesn't. And another favourite writer of mine, Nisha Dolan, responded to this on Substack, and she said, there's an assumption that all young women writers are supposed to be seeking empathy. And I was like, oh my God, nailhead. She said I would have thought it was obvious to any vaguely sentient reader that I'm more interested in playing with form and language than in making people feel for the characters. And critics don't always know what to do with that.

Sometimes my reviews are like, she's more interested in showing off how smart she is than moving you emotionally. And like, yes, I am smart and not very emotionally intelligent. so why wouldn't I play to my strengths, which really made me laugh. And she goes on to talk about how so many people assume that she's the narrator of her first book, which is an assumption that plagues almost every female author that I've ever spoken to or read interviewed or listened to interviewed. And so I wondered, off the back of these two stellar pieces, which we'll link in the show notes,

why do we not trust women to be as smart and as interesting as male storytellers, so much so that we feel the need to make them kind of mind their own person, and experiences in order for readers to get emotionally invested in them and then pay for their work. And I wondered what you both thought of this, if you have experience of this, which I'm sure you both do, and whether or not we'll ever get to the bottom of trying to make women write about the most harrowing moments in their lives just so they can get a foot in the door. So I remember where have all the young male novelist gone by Barry Pierce for Dazed? And this was from a few years ago and I will put it in the show notes.

and it was basically talking about how we have, you know, a wealth of incredible young female writers talking about being young, talking about sex relationships, interiority. Sally Rooney comes to mind. We've interviewed Olivia Petter. There's like so many to name at this point. And I wonder if not only is, you know, misogyny and sexism going on in this world, but also I wonder if it's just also a small part of the pie is the layout of publishing.

It's not that those male writers don't exist. It's just that we don't really have a Brett East and Ellis doing a less than zero take where it, you know, gets so big right now and rivals as Sally Rooney. So I think the industry has this huge amount of talent when it comes to women writing about their interiority and mental health. And we've, you know, spoken about sad girl literature, for example, the genre of the messy women, all that kind of stuff. And I think not only as sexism going on, it's also just that it's easy to pinpoint, oh, well, all women write about is, themselves so we can easily pinpoint this sexist argument that they're writing literally about themselves and it's just it's just a giant mess because not only is that silly and it's demeaning and undermining it's also not helpful and just because there aren't male equivalents doing the same

in the same way and you know becoming as famous to the same level doesn't mean that one equals the other outcome it doesn't mean that you know women can't write about other things it doesn't mean that men aren't doing that either. I just wonder if that's also a tiny piece of this issue. What do you guys think? Yeah, it's so interesting. And I look back and I was thinking of all the times, in connection with books and promotion of books, but also just in connection with me being a writer on the internet, that I have been asked to write personal essays about things. Firstly, things that I have alluded to in other writing, painful things and quite topical things and quite raunchy things but then also have been called to kind of like like cold

call to write things like I've had editors email to be like we're looking for a piece on date rape has this happen to you essentially can you write this and that's obviously detestable and it is I think it does speak to the function that we think a lot of female writers fulfill which is bad things will have happened to you this is very zeitgeisty you'll fit the bill you'll drive the clicks versus really kind of inviting them to have something to say and then shaping the conversation around that it just feels like box ticking at times and in Caroline's piece of the bookseller

she just says our books are mislabeled as auto fiction and that's such a, it's just a related or talk to any female authors as you said and only they will have some kind of story about people just being unable to fathom that a female writer would be able to write about a woman or a situation without, it being autobiographical. There's already such a sense of women's imaginations being like stymied

and bottlenecked and of course our fiction has to be navel-gazing and of course if we've written a book about a young woman in a heartbreak or if we've written a book about a soul or this then we will be happy to follow that up with 800 words for free on the topic so the publisher can sell more books without spending it more money and I find it I think the blending of personal essay with promotional content. I think it does nothing but double down on that image of female writers as sort of just mining their own minds and failing in imagination. And I think, and not to say that women who participate in this probably all feel the same, but I have a sense of resignation to it. And I think so many of these essays are all of the same flavour. And it's not because this is all

that they can write. It's because this is the brief. And the reason it's the brief for women who write books versus men who write books is it is misogyny and it is it's just a really limiting way to do it and it's like I think it's worthwhile to look at why we expect that of women like I could easily go six months without with unintentionally not reading a man's book because there's just so much women of readers and writers in the truest sense and so I find it just a poor reflection of of all of that and of the genius of so many women's minds what do you think and only as someone who has written a non-fiction book about yourself, you know, a memoir in the last few years.

How did that sort of play out for you? Well, it's interesting. I wanted to quickly just quote something that Caroline says in the piece about when men do write first-person pieces. And she talks about John Banville and Column Tobin. And she said, if you've never read their essays, look them up. They're fabulous. They're not so much personal essays as literary non-fiction.

There are no pull quotes in the headline reading. I couldn't believe it. I was in the LA wildfires. There is no Tobin in Rixot. And part of my reticence when coming up with ideas for like what I wanted to write as a nonfiction books, I kind of got offered a different nonfiction deal, which led me down the path, was exactly that. People want pull quotes. They want commerciality. They want snappiness. They want something that is clickbait, basically. And like Nisha says in her piece, that isn't what I don't think most writers find interesting. again Caroline says in her piece a lot that authors are now not just authors that also sales people but that's kind of at odds with what a writer really is a writer often is searching for answers usually if you really dull it down it is about like what is the point of everything what is the meaning of life how do I understand these things writers by nature are not salespeople who work in advertising who are looking for clickbait things I guess with my nonfiction book because it was nonfiction I had to write about myself but that also is quite draining

writing like near enough 80,000 words, you do start to go slightly insane and feel like you are a fully-fledged narcissist. But right now I'm trying to work on some fiction and I made the decision not to write it in first person, to write it in close personal third, for fear of if I wrote it in first person, people would just think I was the characters

or I was the protagonist, which is so stupid, but it is a real fear that I live with because obviously you input so much emotional truth and you do put part of your identity and I think it's famous that in your first novel there will be elements of autobiographical information in there just because that's your starting place, you write what you know. But the fear of everything we're talking about

was so big that it actually influenced how I decided to write the book and in lots of ways actually there's times when I'm writing when I think, oh God, I wish this was in first person it'd be much easier to convey this. And I don't think that perhaps men do feel that same level because there always does seem to be an ability or a credibility given to men that there is a separation between them

and there are, whereas it feels very much like women are only able to write from a place of knowledge, which sometimes is true but more often than not, especially when writers are like prolifically writing lots and lots of books. How can you think that these are all sort of like

autobiographical terms? I don't know. But it's certainly something that I live in a weird fear of, of people making assumptions that anything I do will say or create. It must be somehow a betrayal of my own inner workings. I also an only completely get why you would be worried about that. We obviously spoke about it in our Lena Dunham episode where she could not escape the

idea that Hannah was literally her. And I watched an episode yesterday, bizarrely, where she's in this creative writing workshop and she writes an essay about essay. And the whole room basically just says it's obvious that the piece is about her and it becomes this meta-commentary about yes obviously we can all kind of garner that there is a bit of herself in this writing but also she's in a fiction workshop so who's who's to say what is exactly fiction and what is exactly non-fiction I feel like there's this assumption that if you can only write from your life you're not as credible or good as a writer which is why people are trying to

catch people out or it's used in this demeaning way of oh she's so clearly based this on her own life but even if that was the case that's not that's not the insult i think people think it is it's demeaning because it's removing agency away from the person but it's not a lack of talent to write from your own life it's just a different thing and i don't know also just kind of interrogating that point why this feeling of catching people out or suggesting that they're not talented to write fiction they can only write nonfiction seems like an insult because it's not it's not talentless to be able to you know write memoir or write from your life but somehow it seems to be said in a derogatory way and to catch women out. So that I find kind of interesting. Do you see what I mean with that? Yeah, totally. And it's a very female complaint. It's very much that we are splashing around in the shallows almost and that if it's as

easy to write it into fiction, it's as easy to talk about it in the public sphere. And I wonder whether that's linked almost to this rise of like the celebrity literary it girl. Like I think it's the publishers thinking it's almost better if you are writing. If you have this persona, so I'm thinking, for example, of Dolly Alderton. So if you have this persona as someone who dates a lot or who really like thinks deeply about dating and friendship and love and community and, you know, has this story history that you're willing to put into nonfiction, isn't it great then if your fiction mirrors that isn't that perfect for a publisher who can then leverage you? not to suggest that she has been leveraged, but that I think is the mould that people are now going after

in publishing to kind of create these figures that are so sellable and so relatable and so you can stick them on stage in an in-conversation event and they can talk about the themes of the novel, but also it ties in so perfectly with everything that they've ever put to paper,

their whole social media presence, and it just feels like it's that sellability out of control again. it's and I think it's it's the it's the double edge sort of well she is just talking about her life it's sort of quite it's it's quite insignificant it's quite slight but also that's the stuff that million dollar deals are made of that is the stuff that people buy tickets for and really sign up for and I just think it is it's a side effect of this the way that we sell things now everything hinges on the hook the pull quote how like you as a writer no longer just are they talented it's but can I relate to you will I follow you on Instagram will I buy your merch? will I do this, that and the other. And I think it's all, I think it's all interconnected and quite an exhausting and actually an ugly way at times, even when I think that these writers are completely themselves and almost, you know, their identity as public figure is, is not too dissimilar from probably

who they are as person. I think it's quite, I think it can get quite slimy in what publishers will ask you to do and who they will ask you to become in pursuit of that kind of notoriety where you can get, you can do much, you can do this podcast. you can kind of slot so easily in. And I think it's, again, I think it's misogyny because I can't think of a single man where identity is that much of a crux

for success to be so palatable and so sellable. Totally. I mean, we've spoken on it so many times and I've spoken about it, especially in relation to my work, but one of the biggest things that we mark women against is their likability and the way that we perceive them as a person is actually like, unless we decide not, always but even I'm kind of trained to do it like if you don't decide that you don't like a woman and there's often enough information out in the public eye because they're being encouraged to do

all of this sort of like soul searching writing in order to sell their wares as it were you then make a decision based of their likeability as whether or not you want to get invested in their work and I'm trying to think of like the male writers that I read which admittedly are fewer than the female writers and I don't really know anything about them or about like their history or their lives. And Nisha wrote a really interesting thing in her response substack where she said that I don't think people who are readers are inclined to buy people's books off the back of sort of like extremely personal writing. The way I shop for books is through recommendations. I'll have already read another book by that author. I go into Waterstones. I read the blurbs. And I think readers generally

are picking books off the basis of great writing. And sometimes it might be through having read a long form piece. But I don't think I've ever really gone. I think every now then, especially if it's like a debut author, it might be kind of like a personality cell. Maybe I follow them, find out they're writing a book and I think, oh, I'll remember to buy that. But more often than not, I'm coming to pre-established authors through a route of having read something else and found a recommendation to them. So I do think there's a fault on the publishers as well, because as Nisha really well points out, she's like, they have no metric to find out whether or not this is actually the best means of selling work. It just seems, I think, because

of the thing which people can see which is link clicks if you talk about insert abortion sexual assault a breakup a really bad period of mental health people are going to read that that that's proven but i do think that it's a slippery slope to go down because i've learned this more and more that i don't always want everyone to know everything about me and i hate the fact that sometimes i feel like i don't necessarily own those stories and you hear comedians talking about this a lot when something bad really happens they're sad and then suddenly think oh great that's a new show. That's okay if you're wanting to turn your pain into art, but I don't like the fact that people are forced into feeling like they have to. Yeah, totally. It's different if you're

empowered to do it and it gives you catharsis or you can be the kind of person to create incredible art from it, but it's different, the expectation and it's definitely an expectation. And if not even an expectation, just almost like a well-trodden path, you just have to do it if you want to get any kind of coverage around your book. And I thought it was so interesting. what Caroline was saying about how it almost feels like publications and newspapers almost are the gatekeepers of getting coverage around a release and working in magazines and newspapers and things like that, I can see how difficult it is to get your book to the pages of those magazines or on the site

or review or anything. Unless you are an established writer, it's so hard to get any kind of coverage of what you're putting out. so it's easy to see why if you give a salacious headline if you give a salacious tidbit about your life that would get across the features desk and then that will make it to the final meeting we'll get the review we'll get your piece actually out there and your name out there and it's just it's just annoying because I think like caroline said in her piece it doesn't create particularly creative features the same kind of essays keep going round and round and round. It's shocking, yes, if you can shock people with the worst thing that's ever happened to

you. But I agree with you, Anoni. I don't think people are going to engage with your book because of essays like that. I have never read an essay in the weekend supplements of any newspaper from a writer who has a book and then gone and bought that book. I've only ever engaged with people's work because I like their writing previously, aka criticism, interesting feature writing or substack essays that aren't personal essays. Or I'm going to going to go off recommendations it's never been because of one of these like trauma dump essays that i've gone back to that person's work if anything it makes it makes me see them a bit differently makes me feel a bit like oh wow that's really awful but then i don't ever think about the next thing

that they've created it makes me see them in a siloed position with that tragic event or the kind of thing that they've shared i never think about their other work and maybe that's a problem with me but i think it really detaches the writer from being an artist it makes them a sob story or a trauma story. It doesn't make them feel like a creative or an artist capable of multiple other things. So I think it's actually very damaging. Well, this is it because personal essays are not all created equal. And I guess what people are trying to do is mimic that explosive success that we have seen with so many personal essays, which the personal essay has borne book deals, film deals, signing with amazing agents. It really can be this life-changing thing. So many of my

you know, my favorite personal essays, I'm thinking of the crane wife or even something like Cat Person, which both of them went on to both books or TV deals and things like that. I think it's a case of trying to reverse engineer that to very little effect because it's not the same art form. It's not the same vehicle for great writing because the turnaround of these pieces is often very sure you're not given months to think and research and and kind of paid appropriately you're given here's a couple hundred quid books out in a few months could you get this done for us or even can you do this for free which i think it's it's such a rubbish amount of money it's such a pitiful amount of time to do things and so often in the end i'll talk to people

and they'll go there's that one essay which i wish was never published that got me i mean best worst case scenario is some regret and a little bit more feeling a little bit more vulnerable than they would have liked at a time when they should have been promoting a really worthy piece of work but at worst can be you can get such backlash from it you can get such abuse i remember writing about leaving london this time last year and oh the like dogs abuse i got it was so not worth it it was so misunderstood and i think that can happen to writers at a period of time it's already really vulnerable because you're putting your work out into the world and i'm sure the worst thing you could hear is people are going this was shit what a self-obsessed loser i'm

definitely not going to buy her book now and that can happen especially as the internet is more an friendly, less generous, quite impatient place. I don't know who this serves. I really don't think it's the publishers the way they want. I don't know if it's these magazines. It's definitely not, by and large, the writer. I think I can totally see how after, if you're working publishing, say you secure X amount of titles for your author, the press department does,

it looks like a win because you're like featured in The Guardian, the Sunday Times, glamour, cosmo, and you can just name them, that possibly looks like a win because you have all of these incredible illustrious names under your belt. But it's not considered in a wider landscape. It's not considered, does this have wider repercussions for the mental health of the author? How does this portray the book or the piece of art

in a wider context? And I think I can just see how it looks on paper when you reduce all of that important context behind it. I have a couple of friends who've written very personal essays that have gone extremely viral and to this day they still receive messages about them and both of them have really complicated feelings towards them because on the one hand they can get some really lovely responses

from people relating to them saying that this piece was so useful also get the kind of hate that you got Beth where people are just awful about it but like you said Richard it's just so flattening because ultimately again usually those big experiences are what informs a lot of people's work but it could end up being in quite an ambiguous way. So a really difficult personal situation might set you on a path of carving a character

that will become part of a novel or a sitcom or a screenplay, whatever it might be. And instead, you're kind of reduced to accounting it in a very formulaic, exposing way, which the best art, and we've spoken about this so much, is I do like non-fiction, but I do think that fictional pieces of work have been more impactful than any other kind of art form

on me, on my understanding of the work. and subject matters. And I think when you're kind of forced to use your own anecdotal story, tell it as truthfully as possible and with as much honesty, rawness and tragedy in order to like hook a reader, it's actually a wasted opportunity for that creative person to find out how these experiences could become a bigger, more impactful piece of art that both serves them and the reader

in a way that doesn't leave them feeling overly exposed because yeah those friends that have had those pieces it has actually served them well generally in their careers but it never goes away and it always hangs over you and there will always be a subset to people who just remember you as a woman that wrote about X, Y, Z. And so I think it's definitely such a complicated, it's again, it's what we talk about so much

in this kind of digital age and everyone fighting for attention. It just feels like you're constantly making a deal with the devil and every opportunity within creative industries always feels like a deal with the devil just to try and hopefully get an opportunity rather than credit, merit, or, you know, just your body of work. Next up, The Trouble with Wanting Men.

In a recent New York Times article of the same name, writer Jean Garner asks what we as women should do with our desire when so many of us find ourselves fed up of dating men. And she looks at this through the lens of heteropessimism or heterophatism, as it's now been amended to, which is a term that was coined by sexuality scholar Asa Saracen in 2019 in a piece for the new inquiry. And in this piece, Saracin defines it as such, quote, heteropetimism 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 end quote she goes on to discuss how though sincere this feeling most often isn't accompanied by action as most women who express it will go on to date men and in jean garnett's piece she lays her own love and dating life on the chopping block as she explores this term and her own relationship to it she tells stories of men who seem mature and emotionally sound at first who go on to disappoint her after a handful of dates by being too anxious or flighty or busy to follow up or being charming and apparently perfect for her but only willing to offer an approximation of what she is looking for. She discusses the unfair waiting of labour, mental, domestic and emotional

that is done by straight women in their relationships and the impact of that on our ability to connect, find love and remain hopeful and not fatalistic about our own love lives. And it's a really interesting piece and has been met predictably with a chorus of agreement from other women and also a lot of scorn from those who think it's just another divisive, hyperwoke, gender wars, peace, scuring men and inventing reasons to complain. What I liked a lot about this piece was that she really wrestles with the term heteropessimism and tries to answer the question of just how useful it really is for women who do intend to continue to date and love men?

Does it help them to feel seen and not alone and to further the revolutionary work of demanding that men behave better or is it just a way to snuff out those last embers of hope and to convince more women that the work is futile, that disappointment is all there is

and that they should just shut up and get used to it? I think there's lots to get into with this piece. Can I ask you both what you thought of it and if there were any parts in particular, any stories or ideas or sentences that stuck with you either because you agreed or you felt that they were a little bit spurious, a little bit untrue. I just remember reading a bit in the piece where she talks about having gone on a few dates with this person and essentially the person sending her a reply back

talking about how their anxiety was really bad so they're probably not going to be able to commit to anything and just we mentioned it in our extra bonus episode on an amazing substack that touches on similar themes, but it's just this idea that anxiety has to be divorced from dating or kind of putting yourself out there. And that's just an impossibility. And it kind of reminded me generally of how, you know, I keep seeing all of these reels and TikToks at the moment talking about the cost of community is feeling tired, feeling a bit crap the next day for work, feeling a bit drained, but then in turn you feel nourished, you feel all of these amazing things. And it's so bizarre how we've got to a point where it's like the ideal state

is to feel nothing bad at all. That is just, that's completely impossible. Even on a good day, I might just feel a bit tired or I might just feel a bit like I've eaten a bit too much and I might feel a bit sick. I might feel bloated. All of these things. Feeling 100% is, I don't think anyone ever feels 100%. And it's interesting that this is now getting brought into dating that there is a perfected self when you are dating somebody you'll feel amazing all the time you will never feel anxious you won't feel paranoid that they're dating other people you will just feel good about everything and I think how we optimize work how we optimize health to me it feels like all of those things unsurprisingly are bleeding into dating so that bit really

stood out to me especially because it sent me on this bit of a rabbit hole of just thinking it's And it's insane that, you know, we are expecting such high standards from putting yourself out there, this hugely vulnerable, scary thing. And it's interesting how because of that, people are simply just removing themselves from situations instead as an answer. What about you and only? I agree. So first of all, I thought the piece are just so beautifully written, but there were quite a few

bits that made me balk. I never know who I can say that word, mulk. Mulk. Do you know what I mean? I thought it was like balk as well, but I don't know. Bulk. Yeah. I agree. The anxiety bit kind of I was like, ooh, when I'm kind of taking the piss out of, you know, people labelling anxieties, their reasoning. I understand perhaps questioning whether or not someone's using that kind of language as an excuse, which is obviously a problem, you know, with therapy speak and that being on the rise and people kind of weaponising it. But I did find that a little bit demeaning that segment. And there were parts to me that it did feel a bit harsh. Funnily enough, one of the bits right at the beginning of sentence that really stuck out to me is when she

goes, she said, I felt he wanted me, which is what I wanted, to be organised and oriented by his desire as though it were a point on the dark horizon strobing. First of all, I thought it was such a beautiful sentence. But second of all, I think we're in a situation now where either what people experience within dating is love bombing, where you are, you know, extremely charmed by this person, you feel like they're entirely attracted to you, or there's like just total kind of ambivalence and you're sort of anxious about whether or not they like you. I was with a big group of girls last night and funnily enough we were all talking about not about this piece but just naturally every time I'm with a group of single women we start talking about what is now named

heterophatalism and we were saying that there seems to be like a loss of romance a loss of a language or an ability especially on the side of men to be able to communicate a potential longing or wanting for a woman in a way that doesn't make them fearful of being trapped in some sense and I oh god I have so much I need to like consolidate my thoughts because we were then also randomly started talking about who were the men that choose to queue up for Bonnie Blue. I'm going to get this thought right. And we were saying basically, or I was like positing the idea that because we have such a generation of men that are growing up, unfortunately, with women like me and my friends who feel really disenfranchised from the world of love

and don't recognise the man that we want in the man that we're being presented with, younger generations are also like seeping into this and they feel like sex. and dating is taken away from them that they'll never have access to it, that sex is something that they'll never be able to achieve. And so they end up falling onto like the Bonnie Blues side of things. That's a really convoluted thought that I'm going to try and wrap up neatly. Basically, I understood the piece. It's something I experienced day to day. It's something I think and feel. I also think there is actually a danger in us getting so comfortable, which is kind of what we're talking about, in being so pessimistic, in so fervently saying it's men, because I actually do

another thing I was saying was when you do go on hinge, which I've actually been like setting side time to look on dating apps, there are so many single people and I would imagine that actually lots of those single men, they say it like they are looking for love, they are looking for relationships. So something is really going wrong and they must also be feeling something on their side. But I can't quite work out what that is. I can't get into the minds of the men. And you do have to consider the men of it all because we're talking about how bad it's gone, how bad our experiences. and how we want to continue to date men. You have to consider the men of it all. And I can't remember, I've written a quote down, but I can't remember whether it's from Saracen's piece, which I think it is, which is the 2019 piece where this term was coined. And she writes, from the indignant fury of the insult to the married man

complaining about his old ball and chain, men clearly subscribe to heteropessimism, even if, like all feelings, they are not exactly encouraged to express it. And I think that is the other side of it. I think if we continue to live and consider ourselves in opposition to men and they feel in opposition to us, we can't have fulfilling relationships with us and either we, you have to do the thing where you renounce heterosexuality and you don't just dissent to men, but you live a life without it because you, if you're fatalistic about it and you believe it will never get better, well, it only makes sense that you would do that. But if you do want love and partnership and commitment, then you can't, you kind of conversely can't subscribe.

to this, even if your whole lived experience is kind of speaking to that. And I also saw a quote on eggs discussing website, which is a bell hooks quote. And I think this is, I did read this. I've read this before, but again, I hope I didn't get it wrong. But it's the first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence towards women. Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. And I think this is where it's tied in. I mean, we are begging for things. And we are quite certain, I think in a lot of cases, women are quite certain by certainly my age of what it feels like to be in a good relationship and what certainly doesn't feel right. And in

trying to engage in these negotiations with men, we constantly find ourselves labelled too much or kind of cut off at the past. And it just begets way more trouble to say, well, this will never get better as much as I understand. It feels a completely logical conclusion. But one, when you arrive at it, you can go no further. And I think that's a source of so much frustration that we understand that men are really harmed by patriarchy. They are not the soul and true and ultimate victims of it. But this is a system that really does such great damage to all of us

and our ability to correct. And there is that other side of they are the other part of the heterosexual problem and the trouble that she talks about. And I have no answers there. But I just think it's very interesting to consider the men of it all and what precisely these conditions that they are raised in

have landed us here when they are also single also looking for love also unable to get there is it really and I've been asking myself this question is it that the conditions have changed so enormously

that it's completely incompatible with romance or is it that what romantic relationships are now is such a new conception that I think it's just I'm trying to work out people were always this unhappy or if it's a very specifically 20, 25 problem for men and women. And I can't quite, I can see it from both sides.

Well, to answer that bit, I think people have often been unhappy in relationships, but they were in relationships. We're now unhappy, not in them. I think it's one of the changes. But friend of the podcast and my friend, our friend, Libby Petter, wrote a piece of the time saying, why women are giving in to heterophatism. And she spoke to a male friend who said something I thought was really interesting. and he said, my single straight male friends

are having the time of my lives. One says, I'd say I'm hetero-optimistic. He regularly tells me about the roster of incredible women he's dating. He says, whenever a woman I know has a date,

it's never an exciting prospect for her. It's always a negative thing that she can't be bothered to do, whereas I'm buzzing all day. The irony is when men are hetrophotilistic, they become in cells. And it was making me think of something that people often say,

and I've said it before, and women always say it, which is all of my single female friends, are amazing. Every single woman that I know is, you know, beautiful, extremely clever, very talented, blah, blah. And we're like, where are the men that match up to that? And it was making me think that whenever women have a bad experience with dating, often what happens is we turn inwards. We try to find the root of the issue. So we'll start a big project or we'll work on ourselves. We'll go to therapy and we'll try and assassinate our characters that

to agree to figure out why no one will love us. And when men have a bad time of dating, they also start to kind of hate women. So it's like we're always, the punchline, we're always the problem. And I think that that was really true that line about when men are heterophatalistic, you know, they actually begin to hate women. Women become quite disenfranchised and turn away from men and actually become quite down on themselves and their ability to find love. And I think that's quite an interesting framing as well of how this mentality impacts both genders. I think it's interesting because I definitely agree with that to a degree, but then I also feel like there was this kind of secondary trend of like the whole men.

is trash movement and just almost this like um normalized embarrassment to be straight and just that became the punchline for a bit it's almost like well yeah you know I'm afflicted with fancying men so and it was like a I guess it was a way to deal with the heterophatilism and I think that more that more kind of I hate that I fancy men rhetoric is almost like a mirroring of what we feel that men have done towards us for decades and decades and decades. And I think that kind of sharpening towards men and this hostility is completely understandable. But what it means is that there is a group within both of those genders who are just very prickly towards one another. And as we've spoken about before, it makes a lot of interactions between men and women very charged and very

barbed. So say a man not replying to you suddenly becomes a heated exchange between the expectations of what we, what we're worth, what we, you know, at the very least should expect from anyone in the dating game. And it just feels like everything is so hostile everywhere. And I also wanted to quote one of my favorite kind of sex and relationships and porn writers, Magdalene Jay Taylor, who I talk about all the time. She basically referenced this dating app and I know a few people messaged us to talk about this. It's called T. And apparently it's the number one app on the app store in the US, which is crazy. T is in the US and it's a women-only app where users anonymously share info and warnings about men to spot red flags and

get feedback. She quote tweeted it and she said, sorry to keep hopping on about this, but so many people are treating dating as something to be done defensively and with hostility. The goal isn't even to find love but to foster ammunition against one another. It's not about safety, is about avoiding humiliation. Avoiding embarrassment is of course a natural instinct, but we're forgetting that embarrassment is in itself a natural part of human interaction, especially romantic. And honestly, I don't really know what I think about any of this stuff. It really breaks my brain because it's so, it's so high level what's really happening on both sides. And I think I agree with some bits. I disagree with other bits. I agree with some people's

takes. And it really feels quite, I don't know, it just feels so big and difficult to get my head round. But I do think the kind of rise of this app is saying something about the sharpening of women's perspectives of men in the dating game. It does feel like we're catching threats rather than waiting for somebody to let us down. And I think this also fits into their heterofatalism. It's almost like a sense of, well, rather than getting let down, I'm just going to be on my guard now and I'm going to call you out before you get a chance to do something that lets me down first. What do you think, Beth? There is a bit in the piece I think she talks about because there are the really bad men, the men that are unfit today and actually unfit for society.

The abusers, the rapists, the really hardline misogynist, the people that are not just touched by the ambient misogyny of society, but the people who subscribe to and further it. But in the piece, Genegonaut says, but those men are not the men my friends and I are feeling bleak about. It's the sweet, good ones. Damn it. I would like to believe there is something purposeful, resistant, even radical in the heterophateless mode. But the more I voice it, the more inclined to agree with Saracin that it can produce nothing but more of itself. And I think this is perhaps where I fall because it's such a, it's such a murk of the very bad men and the men that we must protect each other from and we're forced to protect each other from. But then there's also,

on that scale, there's men that you can't date because they can't get the shit together or because they don't have the language that you have painstakingly learned as a woman in the world. And it's like in both of those situations, I can see why your conclusion would be this is completely doomed. And I have to be a fatalist because I'm a realist. But I think in giving it that dictionary definition, it automatically becomes something really limiting. And it also does put in mind the good, fumbly ones alongside the real dangerous ones. And I think it becomes this binary. It becomes the only thing that we can measure. men against and it feels I feel like we are I also don't have answers I feel like we're at the

eye of a storm at the beginning of action and I don't think we can puzzle it out we can't figure it out via kind of talking about it like things will have to change and that feels like a very unique point in history where people are really demanding change and I wonder whether people will date less or already dating less wonder whether there'll be more relationship anarchy whether this will give way to anything better or if this is just going to rumble on as a kind of gender war for many years to come. You can imagine it wouldn't

because surely something has to give. Like people do on both sides want love and partnership and this is one of the things, this is one of the sticks in the mud that is keeping on both sides this from happening. Well, I think it's a mixture of everything that we've kind of ever spoken about on this podcast. I think one of the things is the problem of dating apps

of that really creating a confusion and what it means to seek out partnership and how to find connection. I also think the website that you, the app you mentioned, Ritura, is reminding me of that Facebook group that was called Are We Dating the Same Man? And then that were kind of descend into people putting red flags. And at the time I said this and I maintained this that, yes, you're so right. It's so great to be able to point out when someone is a danger to society. But I could have been, and I think I said this time, but I easy could have gone on a date with someone where they thought I was a bit weird because I said something funny and then that gets translated into something which makes me become suddenly like a pariah like you cannot date her and so I think

it's really messy because what's you know one man's trash is another man's treasure some people might misinterpret or certain personalities might clash or there's so many reasons why you might not hit it off with someone which doesn't mean that they're now no longer safe to be in the dating pool which takes me back to the episode that we did about surveillance culture and self-policing within a society where you don't feel like you have the government parameters or legislation to feel safe within the society, aka rape allegations do not get prosecuted, case of sexual assault go and listen to. And I wonder if part of this kind of website is actually kind of us trying to rectify that and self-manage and self-police by creating groups like this where we think,

oh, well, we can point this out because there's no point reporting. You know, in a safe, happy society, you would have the access to report any criminal or assault allegations and feel like there was going to be a result from that, meaning that you should be able to go out and date in the world without living in fear that someone that you're going to go on a date with is an abuser or an assaulter or, you know, a danger to women. And so again, I think there's like, there's a massive collapse of kind of all of the socio-political things, the threads that we talk about within this show that is, it's showing its head in every single area in culture. And I think that the gender disparity, the gender

wars, whatever you want to call it, we spoke about a piece a while ago. I think when we were talking about birth rates falling, maybe it was in that episode, about how, you know, Gen Zee and younger generations, the biggest divide is between boys and girls, their ideology in the way that they think. And that is a massive issue, which is again tied into every single thing we've spoken about. So I do think you're right when you say we're at the eye of the storm. I wonder if because love is as much as we sometimes want to evade it and there's such a neoliberalist mindset now to say that you know you can be happy in your own and I truly believe that

and all of the statistics saying that single women are the happiest love is one of the biggest drivers in the world for every single part of humanity it is the thing that we get up in the morning for maybe there's something to be said that if this is really causing chaos for people finding partners that that might be the thing that makes people sit up and listen because I do think it is creating a really an unhappiness amongst people not because they're single

but because it feels like there isn't an option to find a partner and I think that that lack of option is actually what causes distress and sadness rather than the actual fact of being on your own. I would say I agree with that completely and in the moments where I have felt I've never been a subscriber of hetero-fatalism

or heteropessimism but the moments where I've dabbled with it and I've arrived in that place have been just the most all-encompassing misery because I think to have a fatalistic attitude about anything is misery but I did notice in the last few years that I was, or actually I guess in the last year since ending a relationship

like I altered my life to decenter men but never to never to feel pessimistic because I think that is just a poison and I think before this relationship that I found myself in yes Beth has a boyfriend odd segment to announce that one on but anyway on we go I had definitely dialed down my desires

And the piece in the piece, she talks about it almost is like an overflow of desire. And we are here with this like abundance. And it's not excess. It's not like women as a whole are out there really just sticking it on men and freaking them out, even though men often will get freaked out. But we have an abundance of desire and it's just putting it elsewhere. And I'm like a romantic from day one, a lover girl. But it was like I was seeing the reality and the reality was like, I'm doing these things,

but it's not returning in kind and so I have to my North Star can't be love and romance my goal has to be something else which is like happiness peace great relationship with myself and hoping that that does at some point join with another person

but I just I had reached my view of love that had been shaped across two decades more had to change and that there's not I don't know it was heterorealism or something else but it was so informed by what I was seeing which was like I think I was really clear-eyed

It was so many 30 and 40-something men who couldn't get it together in a way to date me in a way that was fun and worthwhile. And it was like, it didn't feel depressing, but I was like, if I want to be happy and for my life to pass, well, I have to reconfigure this. And I think that is, I think it's still necessary to switch from craving romantic love when the conditions aren't abundant, which is not a thrilling thought, I think, for a lot of people that are really romantic and really driven to find that. But it does feel necessary. I don't know what the word for that would be. Why do you think I'm doing marathons and high rocks? I've got so much romantic and love energy in me and absolutely nowhere to put it.

So I'm having to do all these freaking endurance things. I genuinely think that's it. I'm such a lover girl. I've always been in relationships. I love being love and there is not a single vessel with which to submit to. So unfortunately, I'm strapping my trainers on and I'm flying to different countries to do really long exercise. I think you're going to be in the next Olympics.

You're going to represent G.B. at this point. I want to be a line now. now actually. I can see it. Probably too old to start. Imagine if they had like, you know, like in the X Factor over 25s, they had like the over 30s line essence. Also not. Thank you so much for listening this week. Before we go, just checking that you've listened to our latest everything in conversation episode

where we dive into the secret nightmare of digital nomad lifestyles. Please do leave us a review and a rating on a podcast player app. It means the world to us and it helps others to find the podcast. podcast and please please please also vote for us in the british podcasting awards and give us a follow on instagram and tic-tok at everything is content pod see you next wednesday bye