Finished Lindy West’s Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman in a single evening, not just because it’s a short and fast read, but because I couldn’t stop reading. I heard Lindy for the first time on This American Life: first her story on confronting her troll and then about “coming out” as fat. As in those stories, in Shrill she’s hilarious, raw, cutting—a self-described “unflappable human vuvuzela” who retains her Jezebel-esque writing style.
Especially memorable was the chapter on her crusade against rape-joke culture within the comedy world. Her endurance of the vicious, demoralizing, and nonstop harassment she receives online is admirable, if also sad and enraging. It’s easy as a non-famous white man to remain oblivious to the vitriol women are subjected to, expected to endure, and refrain from complaining about (“Because that’s how the Internet works”) lest they be viewed as humorless shrews. But the latest fracas with Ghostbusters and Leslie Jones on Twitter is a timely example of just how real and really frustrating the struggle is for women who have the gall to simply exist on the internet.