Fuck It. I’m Done.

Gen X women are angry. Like, really angry. The rage has been building for decades, and this week it has a very specific face. Here’s why we’re done explaining it, and what we’re choosing instead.

I’m angry.

Like, really fluffin’ angry. Oops, did I just sub in “fluff” to make this more palatable? Silly me. Old habits die hard, am I right? I’ve become accustomed to subbing in words like “fluff” when the word I actually want to use is something else entirely. I have spent years on this platform moderating my own language so that everybody in the room stays comfortable. And to be fair, this is a travel, recipe and lifestyle site, so saying “here’s your fucking recipe, Barb” is a little harsh, but I digress.

The truth is, men slide into my DMs and call me a fucking slut and a cunt for having, ‹checks notes›, oh right, an opinion. For simply existing online with a point of view. So, considering the journey we’re about to take together in this piece, I’m not going to soften my language or add qualifiers to make my opinion more palatable today.

No, my only regret today is that it’s taken me 56 years to get here, so fuck it, strap in, because I have some things I’d like to say.

There is a groundswell building right now among women, particularly Gen X women, who have watched progress happen and then watched it get dismantled, quietly and not so quietly, while we were assured it was fine. That we were overreacting. That things were getting better. That the arc of the moral universe was long but it was bending, bending, bending toward justice.

Spoiler: it bent back and smacked us in the face.

What Gen X Women Were Sold

Gen X grew up on promises of a better tomorrow that never came. We read Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’ and felt seen, finally, by someone naming the thing we’d been living inside of. It’s honestly too heartbreaking to even discuss how she turned out. We watched Working Girl and genuinely believed that if we were smart enough and worked hard enough, the corner office was ours, conveniently glossing over the fact that Melanie Griffith’s character had to impersonate someone else entirely to get there. We cheered for Thelma and Louise and then watched them drive off a cliff, because that was, apparently, the only way out.

Remember watching Murphy Brown have a baby on her own terms and how we really thought we’d won something there? Oh, and Ally McBeal! Hailed as a feminist icon, who then proceeded to spend most of her screen time anxious about her weight and her love life. And the pièce de résistance, Sheryl Sandberg, who told us to Lean In, which was very helpful advice if you already had a nanny, a housekeeper, a supportive partner, and a corporate expense account, and somewhat less useful for the rest of us just trying to juggle all the balls and not drop the children.

It’s all so heartbreaking now to realize we were really only given the illusion of winning while they quietly piled more on our plates. Have the career, absolutely. Just also still do everything else. We were so busy wrapping ourselves in “girl power” that we didn’t notice the weight of it until our knees started to buckle.

And Then the Bill Came Due

We watched #MeToo. God, we watched #MeToo. It felt seismic. Harvey Weinstein went to prison. Within a year of the movement going global, over two hundred high-profile men had lost their jobs. For the first time in most of our lives, accountability felt like a real thing that could actually happen to powerful men. We exhaled, a little. We thought maybe this is it. Maybe this is the turn.

Then Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist, was elected president a second time. His cabinet nominees included multiple men with documented histories of misconduct. They were confirmed anyway. The inauguration was attended by Jake Paul, accused of sexual assault, and Conor McGregor, ordered by a jury to pay damages to a woman he attacked. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, confirmed despite credible accusations of sexual misconduct, swore in the vice president. The message was not subtle. The structures of power that #MeToo was aiming at are still very much in place. They just stopped pretending otherwise.

And then the Epstein files. Let’s talk about the Epstein files. Because what those documents revealed wasn’t the story of one monstrous man doing monstrous things in isolation. It was a social infrastructure. A system of access, silence, and protection involving powerful men across finance, politics, entertainment, and royalty. Men who knew. Men who attended. Men who said nothing, and who have continued to face nothing. That’s not a scandal. That’s a worldview. That’s how the world actually works, laid bare, with names attached.

And then there are the Gen X white women who voted for him. Thrice. I don’t know what to say to you, I genuinely don’t. We grew up in the same era. We read the same books, watched the same movies, lived through the same bullshit. And yet, you’re cool with all this? This might be the biggest “what the fuck” of all the fucks I have ever whatted. Because girl, you are a disappointment.

So yes. I am angry.

And Then, The Olympics

And then last week, as if the universe wanted to offer a tidy little illustration of exactly how this works at the everyday, garden-variety level, the Olympics happened.

The U.S. men’s hockey team won gold and Trump immediately called them in the locker room to congratulate them. Worth noting here, no such call was made to the women’s team, who had won gold just three days earlier.

In the video seen ‘round the world, Trump suggested as a joke that he’d have to invite the women too, because if he didn’t he would “probably be impeached.” The men laughed as if the women were the price they’d have to pay to go to the White House. Yeah, we’ll let the little ladies tag along.

And let’s be clear about this. That locker room conversation happens every single day in rooms we’re not privy to, and nobody loses a wink of sleep over it. The only difference this time was the camera. And let’s not forget this is the same president who once dismissed predatory behaviour as just “locker room talk.” So. You know. Full circle.

And this is where the perfect storm begins, because there is no better example of what women have to deal with than the NHL. It’s like a microcosm of the real world. Riddled with stories of sexual assault, hazing, and boorish behaviour for decades, they have done nothing to address the issues, instead throwing money around to protect the players and let the boys be boys. Remember the Hockey Canada scandal, where they had a slush fund essentially to protect players against sexual assault allegations? Yeah, that. And the floodgates opened, because all that rage, all that shit I’ve mentioned prior to this moment, released a flood of feminine rage that they were, of course, predictably unprepared for.

And the best part is they’re back at the same old tired responses too, but we’re not accepting them.

You’re overreacting. Everything is so political. You’re too sensitive. It was just a joke. Can’t you take a joke? We’ve heard it so many times that most of us could recite it in our sleep.

As if to drive the point home with the grace and self-awareness of a Zamboni driving into a brick wall, the Ottawa Senators PR team posted a video on Threads where they sent cameras into the locker room to ask players to name their favourite female athletes. Shirts off, like abs will distract us, while we’re in the middle of a national conversation about how women in sport are treated as afterthoughts.

The ratio was glorious. Thousands of women showed up in the comments to say, clearly and without ambiguity, exactly what they thought of this performance. Because that’s what it was. A performance. A cue card handed to a hockey player by a PR team scrambling to get ahead of a bad news cycle. Not accountability. Not reflection. A fucking social media post.

Sigh. We’ve been getting the post for decades. The Instagram caption. The statement of support. We are tired. And while I can’t speak for everyone, I’m not interested in an apology, only changed behaviour.

The Salt in the Wound (for me anyway)

And you know what makes this especially galling? I’m now defending the American ladies. I mean, I’m a girls’ girl, but goddammit, we’re in the middle of a trade war with the US and you’re making me defend Americans.

As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast.”

I just wanted to take in a hockey game and now I’m out here ready to ride at dawn for the Americans. But when it comes to women, including the ones who just defeated us in overtime, I’m going to show up every time. Even when it hurts. Even when I’m still a little bitter about it.

Okay. A lot bitter. But I’ll be there. Grouchy but there.

So What Do We Do With All of This?

So. What do we do with all of this rage?

There’s enough scientific evidence out there to tell us that carrying this much anger is not healthy, and I’ll be damned if I let the patriarchy give me a heart attack. So here’s where I’ve landed.

We withdraw our emotional and financial investment. We stop performing our anger for an audience that will never be moved by it. We stop explaining. We stop justifying. We just step sideways. Out of the line of fire and into something else entirely.

The patriarchy is a structure that will not be dismantled by our exhaustion, our outrage, or our extremely good points made on social media. It will change, if it changes, because we stopped feeding it our energy and started feeding something else instead.

So I say we choose joy. Let’s outlive them, not just in longevity, but in spirit. Embrace deliberate, unfiltered, what-the-hell-do-I-actually-want joy, not what I’m told I should enjoy. The kind that comes from being in a room full of women where nobody is managing anyone else’s feelings or making themselves smaller. The kind of laughter that happens when you don’t have to explain why something is funny. The kind of travel where you go where you actually want to go. The kind of friendship where you can say “I am so angry” and be met with “me too, now let’s go do something magnificent.”

That is not giving up. That is the most subversive thing we can do.

Because maybe, just maybe, there’s another way. Not wash, rinse, repeat. Not screaming into the void until we’re hoarse and hollowed out. Maybe the answer is to simply step out of the way. Stop feeding it. Stop fighting for an audience that isn’t listening. And go live, loudly and without apology, in the spaces they don’t occupy.

And to the women still standing in that structure, knees starting to buckle under the weight of it as more and more of us walk away: know that it’s a big tent over here, and you will be welcome when you’re done. But more and more of us are opting out of holding that structure up anymore. We’ve got places to be.