You're A Feminist, Idiot

This essay was published by Thought Catalog on December 15, 2016. 

             As we wade reluctantly into the treacherous tundra of Trump’s America, like Jon Snow trudging North past the Wall and right into the hands of those pervert White Walkers, it is time to take a moment to contemplate everyone’s favorite F word: feminism.

            Based on astonishingly simple concepts, the idea of feminism has been so horribly mangled by the public zeitgeist that everyone from angry white men writing things on the Internet, to angry white men reading things written by other angry white men on the Internet, has become hopelessly befuddled. For some time now, young men (and women!) have proudly proclaimed not to consider themselves a feminist in my presence. “How delightful!” I say, taking the opportunity to spend twenty minutes passionately explaining why the thing that they believe about themselves is actually quite inaccurate, all the while grinding my teeth down to little calcium nubs nestled deep in my gums. I’m an absolute treat to meet at a bar. The frequency of these incidents has been increasing at an alarming rate and as a smarty-pants Millennial with a Gender and Women’s Studies minor and the constant need for validation, it falls squarely on my shoulders to correct this. So, let’s answer the question many of you have been wondering to yourself for some time: “Am I a feminist?”

            Of course you are, you idiot. It all comes down to a wildly uncomplicated concept. Do you believe that men and women (and those with non-binary genders!) should have equal political, economic, and social rights? If the answer is yes, then surprise fuckface, you’re a feminist! It’s really that simple. If the answer is no, then this essay isn’t for you. Jon Snow traveled North to form an alliance with the Wildlings. He didn’t run up to the king White Walker like, “My dude!” That bitch has icicle horns growing out of his head! Some monsters can be reasoned with and some monsters must be smashed into a thousand pieces with Valyrian steel.

            If you’re still reading this, then we have established that you are a person who believes that men and women should be equal, i.e. a feminist. However, I realize many of you are still confused about your newfound status so let’s break down some of our most frequently asked questions.

            I won’t have sex with a woman if she’s on her period because I think it’s gross. Am I still a feminist? Of course. There’s a common misconception that one cannot be both a feminist and a raging idiot and that simply isn’t true. Rest assured that just because the sight of a little pussy blood (or free lube, as we call it in the biz) causes your boner to shrivel like a salted leach doesn’t mean you’re not a feminist.

            I’m a male feminist. While I appreciate the sentiment, it is unnecessary to include the word male because “feminist” is already a gender-neutral descriptor. You wouldn’t call yourself a male Democrat. You’d just call yourself a Democrat. And you wouldn’t call a woman a female Republican. You’d just call her an individual metaphorically shooting herself in the cooch with her own vote. (Wow, I went there. Edgy stuff.)

            I’m a woman but my only friends are men. I just get along with men better. Women don’t like me. Am I a feminist? You sure are, sister! And maybe women will like you more if you stop saying shit like that. Or maybe women do like you but internalized misogyny makes you feel like you need to separate yourself from women as a whole, so as not to be included in this inferior group. Maybe ask yourself why “one of the guys” is a compliment and “your average girl” is an insult. Or maybe you are hated by men and women alike because you make eye contact when riding the train.

            I wouldn’t call myself a feminist because feminists hate men. They think women should have more rights than men. But I love men! Are you sure I’m a feminist? Well, you’ve got me there. Hating men is the unspoken foundation upon which feminism is built. If you don’t consider men heinous little cockroaches that’s kind of going to be a deal breaker, unfortunately. And I mean all men. A lot of feminists think they can get away with just hating a few token shitbags. Of course you hate Ted Cruz, and Kid Rock, and the guy who does those cheesy voice overs for Spotify ads. We all do. They make it so easy! A real feminist hates all men equally, even your loved ones and family members. I’ve been sneaking a clear, odorless poison into my boyfriend’s food for months and I still haven’t earned back my feminist card! They took it away after I accidentally danced to an R. Kelly song at a wedding. If the poison thing doesn’t pan out soon I’m going to have to set a manspreader on fire.

            You have spoiled some of the key plot points of the fifth season of HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones and now I have decided that I am not a feminist just to spite you. That’s fair. But know that I will not be dissuaded by my adversaries and will continue to fight for what is right. Just like Jon Snow when he was elected the youngest Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch in a historic upset at Castle Black.

            Well, I hope we have cracked this bewildering conundrum today. If you take away nothing else, just know that in the future when asked if you are a feminist, without excuses or qualifiers, you can simply say “yes.” If not, I pray for your sake that you never meet me in a bar. Winter is coming. 

Woman's Fuck Swing Only Used To Rock Boyfriend During Panic Attacks

This article was published by Reductress on March 30, 2016. 

After watching it gather dust for several months, Albuquerque native Katherine Samson has begrudgingly accepted that her expensive sex swing would only ever be used to rock her boyfriend Clark during his panic attacks.

“It cost me like $230, but I figured it would pay for itself in orgasms,” Samson explains. “But now it just hangs in the living room until Clark’s anxiety reaches a peak every couple weeks. The rocking really helps him calm down, which is good, but…” She trails off, staring at her own crotch. “I just wish we could use it for sex.”

One day Samson came home to find her sobbing boyfriend rocking in the swing. “At first, I thought he was waiting to surprise me with sex since he was completely nude, but then he told me he had just watched a documentary on student debt, and he was convinced he’d wasted his whole life,” Samson explains, shaking her head. “I guess he had just stripped off all of his clothes in a cold sweat during a scene where they talk about the interest rates of private loans.” She adds, “He has a therapist and a prescription for Klonopin, but he really prefers the swing.”

Samson bought the swing in an effort to rejuvenate her relationship with Clark. For several weeks the couple talked about using the swing, but always opted to half-heartedly dry hump on the couch while watching True Blood instead. “One time we were both horny for it, but the cat was sleeping on [the swing], so we both just napped instead.”

Other times Clark has used the soothing motion of the sex swing to calm himself include an unfortunate trip to H&M that made him feel old, a time he thought he saw Philip Seymour Hoffman on the street then remembered he had died, and a summer day on which he accidentally swallowed a firefly.

“I bought the fuck swing thinking it’d inspire a sexual peak,” Samson says, “but instead it’s been home to some of the unsexiest moments in my entire life.”

When asked if she had any advice for women in similar situations Samson says, “Honestly, by the time you know there’s a problem, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it.” When asked if she was referring to the sex swing or Clark, Samson declined to comment.

I Accidentally Bleached My Asshole the Exact Color As My Sheets and Now My Boyfriend Can't Find It

This article was published by Reductress on March 10, 2016. 

It was just a regular Tuesday; I was headed to my favorite salon for my bi-monthly appointment to have all the hair not on my head ripped off of my body. You know, “me time”. But I was in no way ready for the bad fortune that lay ahead.

Every two weeks, a cruel angel named Chantal removes the hair from my legs, eyebrows, armpits, vagina, taint, upper lip, anus, and toes using hot wax for only $350 plus tip. Despite the two hours of white-hot pain, I always look forward to my visits with Chantal because I know the next day I will be as smooth and sensual as a hotdog. The day after I always have the most uninhibited sex with my boyfriend Greg—just one sweet day enjoying a reprise from the constant embarrassment of any visible trace that my body grows hair.

However, Chantal was not at the salon on this fateful Tuesday. Instead, a woman named Linda brought me into a private room where she began deftly removing all the hairs from around the rim of my asshole. Everything was going as planned until Linda asked if I’d be interested in making my anal skin sparkle like new. “Can you do that?” I asked. “Of course,” she said. “All the stars are doing it. You know how every few months your drinking glasses get kind of foggy and then you use Jet-Dry and they sparkle like new? That’s exactly what your butt is like. Assholes are like cups, and nobody likes a poopy cup.”

When she put it like that, how could a girl refuse? In my experience, the worse a cosmetic procedure stings, the hotter you’re going to look, and so I was happy when I left the salon and my eyes were still watering several hours later. 

I returned home excited to show Greg my fancy new bottom, and give him the vigorous freaking he deserves. We moved into the bedroom and I confidently removed my clothing and positioned myself ass up on the bed, ready for Greg to toss my salad; my hairless, newly-bleached salad. As soon as I saw Greg fumbling around behind me, his tongue poking in exploration at the bedding, I knew I had made a mistake. “Marco,” he said hesitantly, trying to make a joke about everyone’s favorite pool game. But it wasn’t funny: Linda had bleached my asshole until it was the exact same creamy ivory as my sheets.

My butthole was now as camouflaged as an arctic fox in a blizzard. We struggled for at least two hours trying to locate my butthole, but nothing worked. Without a visible butthole, it made having sex nearly impossible.

I collapsed on the bed in frustration and Greg ran to get his reading glasses and a flashlight to see if it would help. It didn’t. After orally pleasuring several coffee stains, Greg finally made his way to my anus, but it just wasn’t the same. This act of erasure was too much to bear.

The next day I called Chantal and made an appointment to get my asshole dyed back to its original color. “Wow,” Chantal said as she doused my anus in chemicals. “Going natural. I like it.”

So consider this your warning: If you’re going to bleach your backdoor, at least buy brown sheets.

Gena Gephart's Nightmare Gig

This essay was published by Brightest Young Things on May 20, 2015. 

This is a story about a nightmare gig but this is also the story of a man. The dumbest individual I think I may have ever met. A man who never learned the difference between “sense” and “since.” A man whose idea of a joke is yelling his homemade catchphrase “Put some powdered sugar on it!” repeatedly at the audience. A man who put out his own comedy album after doing ten open mic sets, seven of which made up the tracks of said album. A man who, were he doing all of this on purpose, I would think was an absolute genius, but I’m 89% sure he’s not. And while I will spend the next 700 words shitting on this man I would also like to say he’s the person with the most unyielding self-confidence and go-getter attitude I’ve ever seen and I do respect him for that. Well, respect is a strong word. But it’s admirable. It’s like if a duck wanted to run for president and he did a lot of networking and hand shaking and somehow got elected to head of the PTA at a private elementary school. You’d be like, “That duck is a real mover and shaker. He will never be president but that is still quite a duck as far as ducks go.” Anyways, for the purpose of this essay I will call this duck Todd.

I first met Todd when he came up to me at an open mic and asked myself and a few other comics to do a show he was putting on in this fancy theater in an upscale downtown venue which I later found out he had paid $700 to use. He also told us that the show would be a competition between the 14 comics, each of us getting seven minutes. The winner was going to be chosen by an audience vote and would win $400. All of us going into this were pretty sure it was too good to be true. We didn’t think Todd was actually going to shell out $400 and we really didn’t think he was going to even come close to filling this big ass venue selling $10 and $15 tickets to see amateur comedians. And yet somehow, he did. We were shocked to see almost 100 people slowly fill the theater. How he pulled this off is among the top five mysteries of the modern world, along with why McGriddles taste good and whether Dick Cheney is actually a bear disguised in a realistic man suit. So as we peeked out from behind the curtain we wondered, “Was this show actually just good enough to be true?” And then twenty minutes late, Todd took the stage in a bright aqua tank top, a lei around his neck, sunglasses on top of his regular glasses and took a full five minutes to wish his friend a happy birthday. For the next two hours Todd singlehandedly tanked his own show. It was like if a duck built a fully functional tank and everyone was like, “Wow, how did that duck do that? That’s amazing,” and then the duck drove the tank into a hospital and everyone was like, “Well yeah. I mean he’s a duck. He should not be operating heavy machinery.”

Speaking of ducks, at most comedy shows it is traditional to give the comic a discreet light from the back of the room to let them know that their time is almost up. However, Todd opted to walk onto the stage and blow a duck-shaped novelty whistle at the end of each comic’s set, and as he became increasingly drunker throughout the show, just whenever he felt the urge. At one point he even went so far as to stumble onto stage, blow his all powerful duck whistle in the middle of one of the comics’ sets and demand that she do one of her other jokes. There were some audience members who were into the show, but much of the audience was made up of wealthy looking older white couples who had seen the ad in the local paper and had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Although the show was drastically behind schedule after the first seven comics, there was a 20 minute intermission during which people tried to buy over priced drinks from the overwhelmed single bartender in the lobby. By the time the show started up again, the audience members who had been into it were not, and the old white couples were wearing expressions like their son had just come out to them at a Marilyn Manson concert. About nine comics in, Todd got so drunk that he forgot he was hosting a show and wandered off for 15 minutes, leaving us to have to bring each other to the stage shotgun style. This is when I had the pleasure of going up and while I did eat shit for seven minutes, I do think there is a lot to learn from doing a set for a freezing cold, fed up audience and getting used to that silence. There should be some kind of award for performing a set with grace for 90 people that hate you. I wouldn’t have won it, but I think it should exist.

Todd arrived back onstage at the end of my set yelling that he was back without the least bit of embarrassment or apology, tooting his duck whistle triumphantly. At the end of the show we learned that the “audience vote” meant Todd slurring into the microphone for everyone to throw their ballots onto the stage while the audience exited the theater like there was a fire, and then collecting the crinkled papers in handfuls and stuffing them into a trash bag. However, a few days later after his hangover subsided, he announced the winner on Facebook and a few days after that handed him the full $400 at an open mic. The wildest part of this was that after this colossal cluster fuck of a show, Todd did it again! Having considered the event such a smash hit, the next month he put on another show. Same venue, same excessive amount of comics, same duck whistle. Way less people though, because all those old people were like, “Fool me once, you gross hippies.” The second show tanked even harder and although many predicted he would retire from producing shows, Todd went on to put on many more shows, with varying degrees of success, until he outgrew this fair city and moved out to New York. And now I follow his antics fondly on Facebook, seeing the different commercials and TV shows he auditions for, the many celebrities he almost meets, and the shows he now tricks New York comics into being a part of, and as I watch I think to myself, “Wow, that is quite a duck, as far as ducks go.”