"From 2015 to 2021, my private conversations were some of the best I’ve ever had. Taboo subjects have always been delectable..."

"... but suddenly we were living in a time when so much that was once considered fair game for discussion (education, biological differences, the benefits of policing) had become dangerous.... The #MeToo movement, which felt like a necessary corrective when it began, was starting to feel like an arrow pointed at our own agency. I couldn’t always tell the difference between activism and protectionism, valid critique and frivolous complaint. The notion that men were the ones who needed to change—not a bad idea, in my opinion—had a stubborn way of relinquishing women from the burden of their own choices and behavior. And though the area of expertise I’d staked out as a writer was the complications of women’s independence and the nuances of sex.... What was I, a rape apologist? A bigot? Some kind of moral monster?.... The unsavory truth is that I sympathized with many of these men.... But being sympathetic to these fallen creatures—a trait instilled by literature, my mother, and Oprah—had been declared a sin.... So this is my resolution as I trudge from this dark place: to speak out more.... Not because anyone asked for it, but because this is the career I’ve chosen, and if I’m not doing that, then what are we doing here?"

From "The Things I’m Afraid to Write About/Fear of professional exile has kept me from taking on certain topics. What gets lost when a writer mutes herself?" by Sarah Hepola (The Atlantic). 

This makes me want to repeat something I quoted in the first post of the day: "The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently predicted that the novels of the next 10 to 15 years 'will be awful … Art has to be able to go to a place that’s messy, a place that’s uncomfortable'..."