Melissa A. Fabello

And it’s that last one that really irks me: that most people — and especially most women’s — new year’s resolutions center on dieting and weight loss as the key to happiness.

Being a person with a presence on the Internet is . . . weird. It fills your life with a lot of — well — weirdness. Being a feminist with a presence on the Internet is even worse – besides the general weirdness, there’s also a lot of backlash.

"Because diet culture is so ingrained in our society, and therefore our psyches, a common misconception about eating disorders – and particularly those of the restricting and purging varieties – is that they’re choices that people make with the end goal of losing weight."

And so I slid the scale to the back of my closet, started freely eating doughnuts when I craved doughnuts, and simply donated the jeans that stopped fitting instead of holding out hope for them.

The list on the board filled up with words like “ambitious,” “curious,” “intelligent,” and “dedicated.” And as my professor was wrapping up the activity, I sighed and raised my hand.

“I don’t have a problem,” I repeated, this time with my voice raised. And then, spitting defiance, “You’re just jealous.”

Street harassment. Eating disorders. Rape — three times, including one storyline that involved Zoe being sexually violated at a party by two star athletes who filmed the assault and distributed the video online. Intimate partner violence. Sexist school dress codes. Police brutality and racial profiling. Islamophobia. Sexting and child pornography.

Right now, today, as of writing this, I identify as queer. But I didn’t always.

In my experience dating and sleeping with straight, cisgender dudes who worship hegemonic masculinity, I’ve noticed that there’s something really — umm — special about how they go about sexuality.