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It's Only A Word, Right? Two Iron-Willed Women Tell Us What It Really Means When This Curse Is Used.

We've all heard this word before, and I'm betting most of us have even used it. But what does it actually mean? These women start off by defining the B-word, but around 1:30 they let us know that they refuse to be defined by it.The lyrics are pretty NSFW. I'd recommend headphones.

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mage from Everyday Feminism, used with permission by creator Alli Kirkham.

There are many different scenarios where consent is necessary.

In 2013, Zerlina Maxwell ignited a firestorm of controversy when she strongly recommended we stop telling women how to not get raped.

Here are her words, from the transcript of her appearance on Sean Hannity's show:

"I don't think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there with prevention."

So essentially—instead of teaching women how to avoid rape, let's raise boys specifically to not rape.

There was a lot of ire raised from that idea. Maxwell was on the receiving end of a deluge of online harassment and threats because of her ideas. The backlash was egregious, but sadly, it's nothing new. Such reactions are sadly common for outspoken women on the Internet.

People assumed it meant she was labeling all boys as potential rapists or that every man has a rape-monster he carries inside him unless we quell it from the beginning.

But the truth is most of the rapes women experience are perpetrated by people they know and trust. So, fully educating boys during their formative years about what constitutes consent and why it's important to practice explicitly asking for consent could potentially eradicate a large swath of acquaintance rape. It's not a condemnation on their character or gender, but an extra set of tools to help young men approach sex without damaging themselves or anyone else.

screenshot from Hannity show

Zerlina Maxwell is interviewed on "Hannity."

Image from “Hannity."

But what does teaching boys about consent really look like in action?

Well, there's the viral letter I wrote to my teen titled "Son, It's Okay If You Don't Get Laid Tonight" explaining his responsibility in the matter. I wanted to show by example that Maxwell's words weren't about shaming or blaming boys who'd done nothing wrong yet, but about giving them a road map to navigate their sexual encounters ahead.

There are also rape prevention campaigns on many college campuses, aiming to reach young men right at the heart of where acquaintance rape is so prevalent. The 2014 movement, "It's On Us," was backed by The White House and widely welcomed by many young men.

And then there are creative endeavors to find the right metaphors and combination of words to get people to shake off their acceptance of cultural norms and see rape culture clearly.

This is brilliant:

comics that illustrate consent

A comic about different types of consent.

Image from Everyday Feminism, used with permission by creator Alli Kirkham.

There you have it. Seven comparisons that anyone can use to show how simple and logical the idea of consent really is. Consent culture is on its way because more and more people are sharing these ideas and getting people to think critically. How can we not share an idea whose time has come?

This article originally appeared ten years ago.

Recording Academy/Instagram, Warner Bros. Classics/Youtube

The most perfect mash-up in existence.

Long before Chappell Roan, there was another badass redhead who knew her way around the stage and owned both her glamorous and campy side. And that gal was, of course, the late, great, Lucille Ball. And while the two sadly shall never actually meet, thanks to the power of the Internet we have a pretty incredible collaboration nonetheless.

Before her I Love Lucy days, Ball worked as both a chorus girl in New York and on film, her most prominent film project at the time being The Ziegfeld Follies, shot in 1945. In one of the film’s iconic musical numbers, titled "Bring on The Beautiful Girls,” Ball enters on a white stallion, donning a gorgeous pink showgirl costume (made all the more dazzling in technicolor) then moves about gracefully and even cracks a whip to unleash a gaggle of ensemble dancers dressed as cats. They sure don’t make movies like they used to, right?

With all of these details—primarily the horse and the abundance of pink—it’s no wonder that someone thought to pair it with Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” which just so happened to also feature a horse (albeit a giant fake one) during her live Grammy performance. What is surprising, however, is just how well the two things mash-up together.

Watch the video, shared via Instagram:

Wow, just wow, right? This is a perfect blend of great editing know-how (thanks Peter Zachari) and stars aligning to create something magical. It’s kind of hard to watch this and not be instantly infused with joy.

“That was literally everything I needed right now!” one person wrote. While another said, “Is it terrible that I have watched this 10 times in a row. Absolutely love this you did amazing.”

Besides being amazing ear and eye candy, it reignited some fan love for Ball as well.

“Oh my god this is LEGENDARY. I’m old enough to remember Lucille Ball and she absolutely kicked ARSE in so many ways-fully called out misogynists ON CAMERA, was partly responsible for Star Trek becoming a cultural phenomenon & was immensely funny. This is one of the finest collabs to have ever existed. Pure dopamine, thank you…”

“RIP Lucy, she would have loved scheming to have Chappell perform at one of Ethel’s benefits.”

And in case you’re curious, here’s the original footage of "Bring on The Beautiful Girls,” with even more whip choreography.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

As well as Chappell Roan’s "Pink Pony Club” at the Grammys, swapping whip choreography for lasso choreography, and rodeo clowns instead of cat dancers.

By the way, Zachari actually has all kinds of cool edits on his Instagram page. That’s probably a good palace to start for some fun visual escapes.

If you want to freak out a Gen Zer, put a period at the end of a text message.

As a Gen X mom of three Gen Z kids in their teens and 20s, there's a lot that I'm willing to concede and even celebrate when it comes to the gap in our generations. I love Gen Z's global consciousness, their openness about mental health, their focus on inclusivity, and their insistence on wearing comfortable shoes with formal wear. But there's one Gen Z feature that I simply cannot abide, and that is the weaponization of basic punctuation.

"It freaks me out when you say 'yes period' in a text," my high schooler told me one day. "It feels so aggressive, like I feel like I'm in trouble or something." I stared at him incredulously as my 20-year-old laughed but then agreed with him. "It does! The period makes it feel like you're mad," she said.

Ah yes, the period, the punctuation mark famous for its aggressive connotation. Far from being a mere generational quirk, this misinterpreting of benign text messages as aggressive or angry could result in serious communication breakdowns. Talking by text is already hard enough, and now we're adding a layer of meaning that older folks don't have a clue about?

text screenshotA Gen X text convo with Gen ZPhoto credit: Annie Reneau

The kids are serious about this, though. According to Gen Zers, pretty much any time someone puts a period at the end of a text, it means they're mad or irritated. At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, I'd like to point out that reading into periods in texts like this is just silly. It's silly when the young folks do it with each other, but it's extra silly when they do it with adults who didn't grow up with texting and have ingrained grammatical habits that aren't easy to shake. (And frankly, some of us don't want to shake—I'm a former English teacher, for crying out loud.)

In no reasonable world can "Yes." be automatically viewed as aggressive. It's just not. Neither is "Time to get off the computer." Neither is "Got it." Or "OK." or "Sure." I understand that texting conventions have evolved such that end punctuation isn't necessary, but when did we start assigning negative intentions to very basic punctuation? I mean, if I wanted to be aggressive, I'd text, "HEY—time to GET OFF the COMPUTER!" A period should not be read as anything more than a matter-of-fact, neutral-toned statement. We have other tools for conveying tone in writing—capital letters, italics, bold, exclamation points, and now a whole slew of emojis. A period is and has always been neutral. That's literally the entire point of a period.

I'm even willing to give Gen Z an inch on the thumbs-up emoji—they think that's aggressive, too—only because emojis are new and their meanings are up for interpretation. But a period? Not budging. That little dot has been signaling the end of people's thoughts for centuries. Periods can and do sometimes affect tone in subtle ways—"No, I didn't," hits slightly differently than "No. I didn't."—but their basic inclusion at the end of a thought in no way signals aggression or anger, by text or otherwise. Not on Gen X's watch, at least. This is one generational hill I am willing to die on.

Oh Yeah Mic Drop GIF by Taylor BisciottiGiphy

These unwritten rules of texting seem to have been concocted by Gen Z, but when? And how? Who decides these things? Is there a group of super powerful and influential young adults who put out a bat signal at some point saying that periods are symbols of aggression? If the young folks want to play the reading-into-basic-punctuation game amongst themselves, making communication much more complicated for themselves, have at it. But please don't ascribe intent to us old fogies who've had "declarative statements end in periods" ingrained in us since elementary school.

Texting wasn't always like this. When texting first became a thing, using periods in them was pretty normal. As more and more people started dropping them (and capitalization—another deep English teacher wound), I held firm to their usage, mostly out of habit and feeling like my texts were incomplete without them. As my kids got old enough to text and informed me that periods are viewed by their age group as aggressive, I reconsidered. Should I stop using them, giving in to the tyranny of Gen Z's overthinking? Should I keep using them, embracing the fact that I'm old and set in my ways?

Ultimately, I landed on sometimes using periods in texts and sometimes not—a compromise between my own rigid grammar rules and Gen Z's seemingly senseless texting rules. Except only using them sometimes just confuses my kids even more, which is hilarious. Is Mom mad? Is she not? My daughter said she just has to remind herself who is texting, knowing that I—and most of my generation—simply don't use periods aggressively.

Nope. Not happening. Not ever. Period.

Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0

Eleven years ago, there was a generational split where people born between 1977 and 1983, the cusp between Gen X and Millennials, abandoned their generations and rebranded themselves as Xennials. In 2014, writers Sarah Stankorb and Jed Oelbaum referred to them as "a micro-generation that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of Gen X and the blithe optimism of Millennials,” they wrote in GOOD.

Now, writer Rachel Janfaza has proposed another split. She believes that Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) should be divided into halves: Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0. Janfaza is an associate writer for CNN Politics in Washington, D.C., covering youth political culture and everything related to young voters in the U.S. Her theory is simple: the generation should be divided between those who graduated high school pre-COVID (Gen Z 1.0) and those who graduated after (Gen Z 2.0).

Janfaza shared her thoughts on X, highlighting the different attributes of each half-generation in terms of technology, social media, and politics.


What’s the difference between Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0?

According to Janfaza, Gen Z 1.0 had flip phones before iPhones and grew up with Instagram but without TikTok. Politically, they were influenced by liberal political activism, which included the March for Our Lives, Climate Strikes, and Black Lives Matter Protests. The younger half of the generation, Gen Z 2.0, lived a different life heavily influenced by smartphones, TikTok, and the aftermath of the pandemic, in which a right-wing counter-culture developed.

The older members of Gen Z explained the split to their younger cohorts citing various factors:


How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect Gen Z?

There was universal agreement that the dividing line was between those who graduated high school pre- and post-COVID. Gen Zers who were still in elementary, middle, or high school during the pandemic suffered from a sharp increase in depression and anxiety. In the aftermath of the pandemic, 84% of schools agreed or strongly agreed that students’ behavioral development had been negatively impacted. This puts the dividing line between Gen Z 1.0 and 2.0 right around those born in 2003.


Some see the generational split as a time when online behavior jumped into hyper speed with young people gaining access to smartphones and TikTok.


It’s safe to say that the saddest members of Gen Z are those who graduated high school in 2020 and saw the senior year that they worked so hard to get to blow up in smoke. Many missed out on graduation ceremonies and proms and getting to give their school a proper send-off. They also entered their careers or college on very uneasy footing.


Janfaza’s Gen Z 1.0 versus 2.0 breakdown takes into effect a lot of significant technological, cultural, and political developments that helped shape a generation of people. However, Big Ellie's Single Braid on X may have found another, more critical division line between Gen Zers.

"Macho Man'" Randy Savage during a 1992 appearance on "The Arsenio Hall Show."

A surprisingly wholesome video clip of the late iconic professional wrestler "Macho Man" Randy Savage went viral in 2022 for the surprisingly vulnerable answer he gave when asked if he ever cries.

The 1992 interview with Arsenio Hall began with Hall joking that Savage's middle name is 'Macho,' and asking if he ever cried. If you're not familiar with professional wrestling in the 1980s and early '90s, it was common for the biggest names of the day—Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Ultimate Warrior, Mr. Perfect and, of course, Macho Man—to take on personas that often embodied what we might now call "toxic masculinity." Many of them were after all what they call "heels," in wrestling circles, aka the bad guys.

So, it was pretty surprising to see the downright deep and wholesome response Savage gave to Hall without hesitation.

"It's OK for macho men to show every emotion available," Savage says in the clip. "I've cried a thousand times and I'm gonna cry some more."

This explanation of macho men being able to show all emotions was probably just as relevant then as it is now. The notion that it's not just OK, but completely normal and acceptable for men to cry goes against everything that some masculine norms have told boys from a young age. Not being able to express authentic emotions outside of anger can lead to mental health issues in men.

Watch the full clip below:

"I've soared with the eagles, I've slithered with the snakes and I've been everywhere in between," Savage continued. "Understand this: Nobody likes a quitter. Nobody said life was easy. So, if you get knocked down, take the standing eight count, get back up and fight again!"

As a public figure that boys, teens, and young men looked up to, it was pretty incredible to see Savage appear on national television and dispel the myth that tough guys don't cry and then take it one step further by proudly stating that he himself had cried "a thousand times" was powerful.

While this interview was filmed in the '90s, boys and men today are still fighting against the cultural norm of the hyper-masculine male image that includes bottling up emotions and not asking for help. All men experience a range of emotions, including sadness, because men are people and Macho Man is here to remind everyone it's OK to cry. Even when you're "macho."


This article originally appeared three years ago.