Oil on the beach sand. (No, it does not belong there, and that is not merely my opinion.)

From swimsuits to snowflakes in one predawn session.

I read an article this morning by a woman who has decided against giving reviews of items she has purchased online. She finds the process impersonal and the expectation an imposition. She bought a swimsuit she likes and has purchased many times and her continued patronage ought to be enough. Why become part of a commercial?

That makes sense to me. However, I always leave reviews on Ebay because those sellers are not big companies but more often people like my younger son who supported himself with Ebay sales while he was an undergrad and still sells on that platform. Sellers on Ebay, in my experience, both appreciate and need those reviews. They work hard to ensure that every sale is sent swiftly and well-packaged, something I cannot say for Amazon.

Reviews are helpful to me, and I generally only read the bad ones. Sometimes the reviewer’s bad review is clearly the result of the buyer rather than the seller or product. That tells me something. Sometimes I find a detail that bothers the buyer that would also bother me.

As a result, I do write reviews. I always write reviews on Goodreads after completing a book. Just like on Amazon, I mostly read the bad reviews, but usually only after I have read the book. Sometimes I completely disagree with poor reviews, sometimes I dislike a popular book. That last happens more often than the reverse.

Sometimes, in a fit of madness, I comment on an article I find interesting. It is interesting to me how often men respond if I mention sexism. I mean, every single time. Most recently: “Why take Didion’s failure to address your pet virtue-signaling issues so personally that you feel compelled to broadcast your disappointment? And when you publish your opinion publicly, you are de facto addressing every reader. Is every writer in every age supposed to address sexism and racism simply because they’re the big issues of the day?”

Um. Yes? Because those were overwhelming issues of that time in which they were written and remain so today. “Big issues of the day” ignores history.

I am in the minority of disliking Didion’s famous Slouching Toward Bethlehem. I read those essays when they were new back in the day but only recently read the collection. I did not love them in magazines, but I like them individually even less now. Despite the undeniably fine writing, I genuinely hate the collection. I find it classist, racist, and sexist. Overall, I Didion’s perspective is entitled and arrogant. (She gushes about the McCarthy-hearings supporter John Wayne and denigrates Joan Baez for opposing the war, as examples.) I wrote a lengthy explanation of my objections on Goodreads. On the website, I responded to an article (by a black woman) about one of the essays by saying I did not care for the collection for its entitled perspective. I was asked by another to explain. So I did.

It was a man who asked, and it has been men railing against me since. (Young men insecure about themselves? Men who do not believe women should voice opinions? Men who have not actually read Bellot’s essay?) My life experience, my opinion even when I admit I could be wrong (which I do), my concerns are trivialized. No, worse: they are offensive. They challenge the way the world is supposed to be only about men’s concerns. I get that a lot.

As women, we are expected, so often, to give, to live in the contours of others’ expectations. We are expected to smile, to please, to quietly and unquestioningly exist, to not step out of line by raising voices or points.

When we fail to exist as this sexist ideal, we are branded with scarlet terms, like the one our inarticulate President favors: nasty woman. If you are a trans woman, to boot, your womanhood may be questioned as well; if you are interrupting a man in a meeting, you must be a man yourself, the transphobic paradigm goes. We can be “good” women, or not women at all.

To have self-respect in our oh-so-progressive world, then, is to risk being attacked with misogynistic epithets, or to risk not being labeled a woman at all. We’ve come so far, in some ways, yet here I am, writing the same words so many others have before me, because these same words still need to be shouted today.—Gabrielle Bellot

In other words, the men trolling comments must not have read the article I was commenting on. So now I have a use for that pejorative: snowflake. Set aside for the moment whatever that word is supposed to mean these days in the broader world. Mine is a very narrow and personal use of the term: I mean the fragile male egos who cannot bear to hear an opinion from a woman that places her concerns center stage.

Note that I do not claim my concerns are the only ones, only that I have concerns. I claim the right to voice them. Now I will go reread the original essay, which is thoughtful and has been lost in all this mess.