Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Art isn’t indiscriminate shit-flinging. It’s pure communication, crafted with intention and care.

“Everything has repercussions. If you’re talking about legal repercussions, yeah, I do not think that comedy should be censored, and we’re not here to talk about censorship, and”—I gestured to Jim—“I’m pretty sure we agree.” The censorship argument is a boring red herring—I wanted to knock it down early. Rape joke apologists are quick to cry “free

There is nothing novel or comedic or righteous about men using the threat of sexual violence to control noncompliant women. This is how society has always functioned. Stay indoors, women. Stay safe. Stay quiet. Stay in the kitchen. Stay pregnant. Stay out of the world. If you want to talk about silencing, censorship, placing limits and consequences

“This fetishization of not censoring yourself, of being an ‘equal-opportunity offender,’ is bizarre and bad for comedy. When did ‘not censoring yourself’ become a good thing? We censor ourselves all the time, because we are not entitled, sociopathic fucks…

Women, it seemed, were obliged to be thick-skinned about their own rapes, while comics remained too thin-skinned to handle even mild criticism.

The idea that a relationship is a “failure” simply because it ends is a pessimist’s construct anyway.

Flying first class wasn’t intrinsically special, but it was the first time in recent memory that I’ve felt like a human being on a plane.

she taught me to cope with pain by chopping it up into bits small enough to laugh at.

Challenging myself to absorb more and more hate is a masochistic form of vanity—the vestigial allure of a rugged individualism that I don’t even believe in. No one wants to need defenses that strong. It always hurts, somewhere.