I have very mixed feelings about all the confessional writing from women I read here on Substack. It falls into three different categories, there’s the more trad would be literary confession (think of 1950s poets like Denise Levertov or of course, Sylvia Plath) that can get very writerly and writer’s workshoppy, then there’s the branding exercise where it’s all about “trauma”, follower numbers or making money and lastly, your everyday rando female who starts getting into it.

The first and second types of confessional writing often make me cringe even though I recognise the importance of women writing about their lives because we are in a period where we need to re-think what being a women is as well as find a viable model for relations between the sexes. Who does that well? Mary Harrington.

I also recognise that there is something like a women’s culture which is more embodied than men’s culture. This is simply because our bodies and their changes have a stronger impact on our lives than men’s bodies have on theirs… or something like that. Who speaks of that well? Mary Harington and Louise Perry.

And I might add that there are women on here who occasionally write about their worlds in perhaps less of a “tell all” confessional vein than as a kind of witnessing, women whose writing I love.

What do you think about women’s confessional writing? Please comment.