Usually, I’m pretty good at sniffing out the riff raff on my blog, but distinguishing between trolling and ignorance is always a close call. I wasn’t quite sure which was the case when this hit my inbox after I wrote an article for Skirt! Magazine’s August issue (“What did Cosmo teach me about feminism?”):

I have to say that I do not understand WHY “Skirt” would bother including one of your absolutely frivolous, dumb and weak article in their publication?  Are you really serious—  No wonder Harvard is putting out such uneducated graduates.  What a waste of money!!!!  I am a writer and find you very well lets just say a bit of a buffoon.  You are so willing to give away your privacy what is left I would ask you?

I wish you the best, but you would think you would have more respect for yourself and other women.  I hope you find that G-spot after all that is of grave importance.  What do your parents think of your blog?  I am sure they just love it and discuss it over dinner right?

I am sorry, but I  had to write you because I am amazed at how little class and respect you have for yourself and other women!  I guess with a rag like Skirt that is what they want to publish.   Sad!  The lack of real writing about real issues are really above their heads and obviously yours.

Say what? Given the content of my not-so-incendiary article, I’m surprised they took my account of my Cosmo-reading days as such an … affront to their personal value system. But given the absence of crass language, I’m inclined to think that this letter writer is for real and not someone purposely trying to incite a reaction. Even I’ve written more controversial things, no? Likely, this woman read (or “read”) my piece, looked me up, and was terribly offended by my Google results. Not really my problem, though I’d still like to know what her beef was with my article.

My response:

If there are specific passages in the Skirt! piece that you take issue with, I’d be happy to discuss them and you can certainly leave a comment on the website where the piece is published. Without any excerpts, it’s hard for me to understand where some of your criticisms (lack of respect for myself/other women, “uneducated”, “frivolous”, and “dumb”, etc.) are coming from. If it isn’t clear from the article itself, I am critiquing women’s magazines for their non-substantive content and for their emphasis on consumerism/the beauty ideal (things that are harmful for women).

As for my blog, I don’t see what my parents’ opinion has to do with anything. Again, if there is something specific on my blog that you take issue with, please make that clear instead of just making ad hominem statements.

And the author’s answer:

Did you find your G-Spot?  I am sure many have!  Women like you can never be considered writers—you are an overexposed Blogger!  Big difference!!!!!

Troll or not, someone failed to look up the definition of ad hominem. Whatever.

Since I’ve begun working on my sample memoir chapters, I’ve made a concerted effort to start getting  through a body of literature that could help inspire the type of writing I hope to do. (Regular readers of this blog may already know that I am obsessed with fiction by old British dudes, namely Patrick McGrath and Ian McEwan. But as much as Gothic contemporary tickles my literary pickle, the story of Sex and the Ivy did not take place in a decaying Victorian mansion, so I’m going to have to put the kabosh on further leisure reads as long as I’m trying to complete a book chapter.) I’m lucky because my self-employed (though largely unpaid) work entails a lot of reading, albeit with a narrow focus and not always for pleasure. To that end, I’m refamiliarizing myself with some of my feminist literary heroines and getting to know new ones.

I want to write a memoir that isn’t just about myself and my personal journey. My blog and its aftermath are interesting enough that media outlets view them as worthy of mention, but really, my life as an individual woman in America is pretty inconsequential given the grand scheme of things. In other words, I have no aspirations to pen the next Eat, Pray, Love and I don’t want to write without any regard as to whether my experiences or opinions have any resonance with women who aren’t like me. As I told an agent yesterday:

Though [the book] will be largely focused on my blog and the impact it had on my college experiences, I’d like for the book to incorporate social critiques of class and gender. I don’t know how familiar you are with my background but I come from a lower middle class immigrant family and Harvard was in many ways quite a culture shock at times. Have you read Fear of Flying by Erica Jong? That’s the kind of book I’d like to write — one that isn’t just about what happens to the heroine but about what this story means for women as a whole.

Some of the following are books I’ve read many times over from cover-to-cover, and others are ones that I’ve just gotten a hold of. None are chick lit, some aren’t even memoir, but plenty are part of feminist canon. Here are my recs:

The Women’s Room, Marilyn French
Braided Lives, Marge Piercy
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Alix Kates Shulman
Oryx and Crate, Margaret Atwood
Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live: Collected Nonfiction, Joan Didion*
Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence

* I know that Didion is rather dismissive of second-wave feminism and also kind of an elitist, but I’m giving the rest of her non-fiction a chance given how much I liked Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Forgive me for once valuing style over substance.

If you have recommendations for well-written books that critically interrogate Western assumptions about gender, class, and sexuality, please add them in the comments.

Anonymous asked: I read your blog almost every day. You've covered almost everything that I've ever had questions about--health, college, sexuality, etc. It's been a great comfort. Please know that you've made a difference in at least one teenage girl's life.

This comment almost made me cry. Not to get all sappy on y’all here, but when I started Sex and the Ivy, “making a difference”, so to speak, isn’t what I expected to happen. I originally blogged only for myself — in the sense that I wanted a space for my thoughts and writing and opinions. And even after I garnered an “audience”, it was still a project for and about Lena (and Lena’s life and Lena’s friends and Lena’s often poor decisions). I like to think that I’ve grown up a little since, that I’ve been able to recognize that having a platform is a supreme privilege, one that I shouldn’t waste on a mere vanity project. That’s why over the past couple years, I’ve started to concentrate on writing about more than my own life. That’s why when I do write about my life, I try to do so in a way that is illuminating to other people.

I have no idea how much or how little difference I make. I don’t know how many people read me as a case study on what not to do. I don’t know how many people actually agree with what I have to say. I don’t know how many minds I change at the end of the day. But even if I post an entry that gets zero comments, I know there are tons of you out there reading. (Thanks to Big Brother, ahem, I mean, Google Analytics.) So I can only hope that you’re getting something out of my writing. Perhaps I challenge your view of relationships by writing about how I conduct my own. Or maybe I expose some unexamined biases you might hold. Or I answer a burning question that you can’t ask anyone else. If I’ve prevented a single girl from turning to Cosmopolitan in a time of need, then I’ve succeeded.

To all the teenage girls out there: I’m not perfect by any means and I don’t have all the answers, so please don’t think of me as a role model. (Unless I decide to start a cult, in which case you can shower me with endless accolades.) Think of me as someone who learned some very valuable lessons and is simply passing them down. One day, you’ll do that too.

And if it weren’t for my readers, I wouldn’t be who I am either. So thanks for that. I’m glad that my blogging has evolved into something that is as much about the people reading as it is about the person writing.

My attempts to update Sex and the Ivy have been thwarted these past few months because I’ve forgotten my password. (This is evidence of how much I’ve let that blog deteriorate, agh.) The “Forget Password” feature is also broken because my edition of Wordpress has a bug.

When I become a wealthy memoirist, I will hire a IT person so the Roomie is no longer delegated all tech-related tasks.

Sometimes, people* tell me that they like “the way” I write. (*By which I mean that I receive comments from Internet people who could very well be the Roomie validating my existence.) I know these remarks are meant as compliments but I rarely receive them as such and instead, I think, “You mean that my crippling self-doubt is on full display and it appears almost poetic at the top of your Google Reader?” This might be because I most commonly hear this compliment on posts in which I have taken special care to be as self-deprecating as possible while stopping short of suicide jokes. (I have learned through trial-and-error that rants about the futility of it all will only tip off your Resident Dean, who is then contractually obligated to have an uncomfortable conversation with you. So I refrain.)

It’s not that I don’t believe in my self-worth; it’s that I’m certain I am a more appealing writer when I do not believe in my self-worth. When I first started writing Sex and the Ivy, one of my most popular posts was entitled “A History of Depression”. In fact, most of my popular posts were about bedroom mishaps, emotional/eating issues, and disdain for Harvard. In other words, I became famous on the Internet for making other people feel better about their lives.

Can we be clear about something? I am frighteningly insecure. Much less so now post-sex-blog and subsequent fallout/thickening of the skin, but I still have a fragile ego and a painful desire to be liked. And thanks to Google, if you search for “painful desire to be liked”, I am actually the only result. Great. Posterity will appreciate that.