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phoebebovy.bsky.social
Phoebe Maltz Bovy
@phoebebovy.bsky.social
1.9K followers 700 following 4.5K posts
https://phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/745513/the-last-straight-woman-by-phoebe-maltz-bovy/ Opinion ed., The CJN, contributor columnist, The Globe and Mail. Half of Feminine Chaos.
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phoebebovy.bsky.social
As a done-with-men movement has taken off since 2017 and #MeToo, so too has an associated seasonal category. And the primary audience for getting together with platonic-sense girlfriends in a pink-filled room is, yes, straight women. If you’re a lesbian, you’re probably not the market for don’t-need-a-man paraphernalia, at least not in the greeting-cards sense.
February 13, 2026 at 9:11 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Obsessed with my new (used) coat, that it is too cold out to wear yet.
February 13, 2026 at 7:58 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/u... There's a way that the very real story of one man having been awful is serving as a permission slip for something else that is also awful.
While Mr. Epstein’s remarkable web of connections suggests to some that he was a puppet master calling the shots for a cabal of elites, that same web offers at least some proof to the contrary. Mr. Epstein counted presidents and cabinet members as his friends, but his influence on American policymaking was negligible.
February 13, 2026 at 5:20 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
uh
February 13, 2026 at 5:06 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Not paywalled but some preview all the same.
The straight woman who feels like a gay man is a figure from another time, from before there were well-publicized instances of people who literally did medically transition and live as gay men. It was, a lifetime ago, a way of referring to a certain sort of woman. A Samantha, a Blanche, if you will. These were straight women more into sex than romance, or maybe just more into interior decorating than PTA meetings. Women more into liking of men than being woman, which I personally understand. Women who got along particularly well with gay men, maybe, and who would sometimes hear this oh-so-problematic, oh-so-appropriative description of us from our gay male friends for crying out loud.
February 12, 2026 at 2:14 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Epstein and the MeToo'd men. phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/the-ladder
the exonerating impact this aspect of #MeToo overreach had on the truly terrible men is not something that merely happened. It is something that Jeffrey Epstein, at least, leaned into and tried to make work for him. After all, once there’s a consensus that a bad man is a bad man is a bad man, and really aren’t all men examples of toxic masculinity, then how bad can any one man be?
February 10, 2026 at 1:56 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
If anything, fight-against-antisemitism initiatives can have the air of a kick-me sign. ‘Be nice to little Timmy, even though I know you DESPERATELY want to bully him.’ I find myself wondering if there are people learning to hate Jews from all the talk about the scourge that is antisemitism, people who would never have known that it was a thing, Jew-hatred. I wonder this for a millisecond before remembering… the internet. The world. Which brings me to the other idea in this area coexisting, not so peaceably, in my mind. And the other is that a society that has an apparatus, however cringe and futile-seeming, aimed at fighting antisemitism, this is a society that is yeah probably not on the cusp of going full antisemite.
February 9, 2026 at 9:59 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
And the Verge story sort of shows Epstein doing just that. To me this looks like using FAR less significant stories as a way of laundering his own reputation, and not (as it's presented in the piece) as a club of interchangeably evil men.
At one point, in an email to the MIT Media Lab’s Ito, he writes, “with all these guys getting busted for harassment , i have moved slightly up on the repuation ladder and have been asked everday for advice etc.” In a 2018 email, Epstein writes, “instead of the friars club , can we do a pariahs club dinnr. woody me moonves wynn charlie matt. louis ck. etc.”
February 9, 2026 at 5:20 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
The general thesis about Epstein and high-powered associates is correct but what does any of this have to do with rendering a verdict on "anti-woke," which was like 50 different things some mutually exclusive and some unrelated to MeToo?

www.theverge.com/tech/874721/...
Being able to see their emails makes something very clear: The “anti-woke” movement was not a genteel intellectual inquiry, made by disinterested parties who cared deeply about free speech. It is a social circle of powerful people who feel threatened by #MeToo.
February 9, 2026 at 5:04 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/mcmansion-...
The problem is that there probably is such a thing, too much, where beautification’s concerned, but there’s no way of pinpointing what that is in a neutral or objective manner. Far too often it’s about women who would not personally benefit in any which way from some procedure having a laugh at the ones who’ve gone in for it. Or it’s men juxtaposing ‘before’ photos of an actress at 20 with ‘after’ of her at 40 with (presumed) work done and asking why she didn’t leave well enough alone, look how pretty she was ‘before’!
February 9, 2026 at 1:29 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
The two people left who don't block me on this platform
February 6, 2026 at 3:17 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Not the greatest photo but these are our somewhat more appetizing non-seasonal strawberries.
February 6, 2026 at 2:44 AM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Here is where literally everybody else gets to claim to be, as it goes, self-made.
February 4, 2026 at 8:46 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Aww, my first blurb.
February 4, 2026 at 2:35 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Quasi-narcissistically obsessed with how the Harper's letter is getting retroactively anachronistically turned into a document of loyalty to one of the signatories (not a letter organizer, not someone I'd even known was on it not that I'd have cared). phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/the-harper...
February 1, 2026 at 3:57 AM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
You never know when an invitation only secret island for utmost confidentiality will come in handy
January 31, 2026 at 7:41 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
For my own very specific reasons I am following the political career of Amy Klobuchar.
January 29, 2026 at 6:51 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
I guess people are using FB Marketplace for all sorts of things.
January 28, 2026 at 2:52 AM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
I have a different view than many but not all on here about how Trump happened. I am therefore worse than Nazism.
January 26, 2026 at 3:43 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Yes Fahrenheit
January 24, 2026 at 2:10 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Never a good sign when there's a passage that is this point-by-point questionable. Public school is free so even if this were true of daycare (which, not always) what are we even talking about? And if both parents work it would be an issue if *either* stopped working!!

unherd.com/2026/01/am-i...
Many women earn little more than the cost of childcare, which makes the woman’s work mostly for her personal edification or satisfaction. The man enjoys no such luxury. He’s also, whether his wife earns a lot or little, always calculating, behind the scenes, what he is going to do if and when she wants to stop working. Even if she said, before parenthood, that she planned to work until retirement, the husband knows it will fall to him to keep the family fiscally whole if she changes her mind.
January 23, 2026 at 3:10 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
The current 'white'-women-hating misogyny (that's just plain misogyny) seems to have evolved from a specific anti-Jewish-women mindset.
The worst thing a young woman could be, circa 2014, was “basic,” aka a “basic bitch,” a category that, much like the JAP, is both used for describing bullies and itself a bullying accusation. It says something that the Wikipedia description of basicness is effectively a description of JAPpiness: “culturally unoriginal people, particularly young women, who are perceived to prefer products, trends, and music that will make them look upper class even though they are not.” They like logos? Check. They’re nasty to women who don’t conform, whether due to budget or aesthetic divergence? Check. Materialistic, consumerist conformity, paired with conventional femininity. Anti-basic-ism presented itself as a punch up at snooty young women, but was often enough more like a claim that one was, oneself, more interesting and very possibly wealthier, or at least more old-money, than the women in question. The de-Judaized JAP reemerged in a new form around 2020, with the “Karen.” The woman of a certain age who makes a fuss and insists on speaking with the manager became an all-purpose cross-ideological punching bag. Karens, in theory, were racist women, calling not just managers but cops, often to complain about imagined threats from Black people. The term quickly became shorthand for any time a white woman past the age of cuteness asserted herself to the annoyance of others.
January 20, 2026 at 1:29 AM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
Extremely important furniture shopping on Facebook marketplace post. 1940s TDSB desk and chair set for my older kid!
January 14, 2026 at 11:48 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
What is the end game here? For the workers to get paid better, or for Breads to de-Israelicize itself? Which would mean what, given that the people running the chain are Israeli, as is the cuisine? Because the reality is that yes, as the union statement on Instagram notes, Breads Bakery is successful and profitable. Its rise is at least in part from the support of Jewish New Yorkers and visitors and non-Jewish New Yorkers and so on, who have intentionally sought out the chain for its Jewish and Israeli elements. ‘Pay us more because the company’s doing so well’ is not really compatible with ‘become an entirely different sort of business.’
January 12, 2026 at 7:27 PM
phoebebovy.bsky.social
If Hyacinth Bucket had Instagram I know how she’d be using it!
January 10, 2026 at 10:21 PM