I liked Gone Girl too, but the “Cool Girl” discussions ended up being another way for women to self-infantilize, to claim all the boons of feminism while accepting none of the accountability or responsibility that increased power and respect entails.

Welcome to life: if you want something to be a certain way, you have to make it, take it, or shake it till it gets that way. Eventually I think feminism will get good again as it embraces women actually being fully-responsible members of the political and social community, but right now feminism is mostly about attempting to pretend to be agency-free children when it benefits women and then complaining when they are actually treated like a child in other realms too.

And that’ll only go so far. Those contradictory leanings have probably reached about the end of their practical shelf lives, but all this will take another decade or so to play out, as these things always do.