Not knowing anything about this book going in, was getting very worried with the initial chapters fully centering/glorifying Ansel's perspective (which is such an issue with true crime media/literature), but now starting to get hopeful this will not be the case? I know the blurb talks about focusing on the women who were impacted, but it hasn't delivered on this yet...

”Generally, dudes have better access to blue collar jobs, which have traditionally paid more than many working class jobs for women.”

”…and since America tends to listen to old white dudes, it takes a little while for all of us to catch on.”

It takes me out how she almost always uses “dudes” instead of “men,” even in cases where she uses “women” later in the same sentence. Is this a blog post? Is she doing this on purpose, like the “men and females” thing but with “women and dudes” instead? It would track with her whole neoliberal white feminist vibe here, which sees stuff like replacing the gendered “you guys” with the non-gendered “y’all” as the height of praxis

I cannot believe she's ending this book with another "and everyone clapped" anecdote about winning a linguistics debate against a guy at a party.

"After I finished my little spiel about 'you know,' this guy looked at me with these sort of big, surprised eyes, and said, completely genuinely, might I add, 'Wow, it's cool you know so much about how people talk. You must be the most interesting person in every room!'"

Sure he did, Amanda.

i think i need to have those eyeball gummy candy’s to chew on while i read to really immerse myself in the experience

"In 1987, a duo of kooky hardcore feminists named Mary Daly and Jane Caputi published a book called Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language."

heavy sigh I should've known that a book that notably quoted Ben Shapiro as a "journalist" would refer to known terf Mary Daly as just a "kooky hardcore feminist," and right after the chapter on how trans people are innovating with gendered language too

Zombie frogs? Well colour me interested already