​“I final­ly start­ed sob­bing-sob­bing,” reads one entry from author and some­time New York Times cor­re­spon­dent Kara Jessella’s blog, ​“real cry­ing, not illus­tra­tive cry­ing, like leave me alone, you are ter­ror­iz­ing me, i just had a seizure like two weeks ago, i’ve been up all night, what is wrong with you? how could you treat any­one like this? much less ME? cry­ing — and said if he real­ly cared about my health why was he yelling at me.”

The off-the-cuff pre­sen­ta­tion — a no-caps recap of a fight with a boyfriend, post­ed along­side a Kel­ly Clark­son song — is mis­lead­ing. It’s very Inter­net. And thus, one might assume, very unse­ri­ous. What you’d be miss­ing, in such an analy­sis, is that this blog post is a har­bin­ger of a new fem­i­nist moment.

Con­sid­er: This summer’s fash­ion­able read is Sheila Heti’s How Should A Per­son Be?, a ​“nov­el from life” that includes lines like ​“I want­ed to shoot myself in the face with a gun that released so many bul­lets at once, which would fan out and hit every part of my face and explode it into noth­ing, into mush,” and med­i­ta­tions on becom­ing a ​“great blow-job artist.” The girl-cen­tric TV show of the moment is Girls, writ­ten by and star­ring Lena Dun­ham, who is half-naked and fend­ing off awk­ward anal sex with­in the first 15 min­utes of the pilot, and writhing on her par­ents’ bed­room floor in the grips of a pan­ic attack by its end. Dun­ham acknowl­edges that the show is autobiographical.

As for music, this season’s high­est-praised album by a woman is Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel Is Wis­er Than the Dri­ver of the Screw, and Whip­ping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do. The album con­tains cho­rus­es such as ​“don’t let me ruin me” and ​“how can I ask any­one to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone?” In inter­views, Apple dis­cussed her break-up with writer Jonathan Ames, laid bare both her drink­ing prob­lem and the extreme social iso­la­tion that enabled it, and spoke about being so angry that she obses­sive­ly climbed a hill until both her knees gave out. That is to say: What the girls are doing now is vulnerability.

It’s tempt­ing to view this as apo­lit­i­cal. It doesn’t hit any NOW or NAR­AL talk­ing points. The nar­ra­tors don’t typ­i­cal­ly spend their week­ends rais­ing funds for Planned Par­ent­hood. They spend approx­i­mate­ly zero time list­ing rea­sons not to vote for Romney.

Instead, these writ­ers head for the meaty, scary ter­rain of ​“girl stuff.” Straight women are writ­ing in detail about fights with part­ners or bit­ter­ness toward their exes, with­out both­er­ing to acknowl­edge the icy con­tempt this inspires in most straight men. Women are describ­ing psy­chic pain — and psy­chi­atric diag­noses — with­out both­er­ing to won­der whether they sound weak or hys­ter­i­cal. Women are describ­ing sex, and not just phys­i­cal posi­tions: They are chart­ing every emo­tion­al and social con­tor­tion required of them as women. This is dar­ing and nec­es­sary because (like con­scious­ness-rais­ing or Riot Grrrl before it) it shame­less­ly reclaims ​“act­ing like a girl.”

This has prece­dent. The female con­fes­sion­al poets of the six­ties, for one; Anne Sex­ton aimed for the crotch in poems like ​“Men­stru­a­tion at Forty” and ​“Bal­lad of the Lone­ly Mas­tur­ba­tor.” Sylvia Plath wrote poems about house­wives chat­ting in kitchens (“Les­bos”) and chop­ping onions (“Cut”). Both dis­closed their men­tal ill­ness­es. They were some­times dis­missed (The New York­er called Plath ​“girl­ish” and ​“ama­teur;” the New York Times Book Review called Sexton’s sub­ject mat­ter ​“pathet­ic and dis­gust­ing”), but few today would dis­pute their influ­ence. Their man­tle was picked up by queer and women of col­or writ­ers of the ​’80s and ​’90s (Audre Lorde, Glo­ria Anzal­d­ua) and again in the ​’90s and aughts by writer/​performers (Staceyann Chin, Michelle Tea).

Today’s fem­i­nist first-per­son owes much to the Inter­net. Emi­ly Gould antic­i­pat­ed the aes­thet­ic by near­ly a decade, and reaped the whirl­wind for it, as she relates in her 2007 New York Times Mag­a­zine essay on ​“over­shar­ing.” Marie Cal­loway got a book deal this year after post­ing a sex mem­oir with a pic­ture of her partner’s cum on her face; Lena Chen post­ed the same in 2008, and was reward­ed with ded­i­cat­ed hate blogs. Even a few years ago, to do this online was to be pun­ished. It’s less taboo now — and more tele­vised — for the same rea­son we don’t see arti­cles these days about why you shouldn’t post drunk pho­tos on Face­book. We’ve accli­mat­ed. But it’s also because when women speak their truths aloud, oth­er women answer with their own.

Which brings us to Jes­sel­la. Her blog is a high-wire act. Aside from the fight above, it details a mis­car­riage, time spent in a psych ward and her ex-boyfriend’s insen­si­tiv­i­ty in deal­ing with all of the above. There are e‑mails from him, high­light­ed, dis­play­ing said insen­si­tiv­i­ty. There is the fact that she bit him. This sort of thing tra­di­tion­al­ly gets one’s ass sued; the ex is anoth­er writer, and Jes­sel­la has nev­er dis­guised his identity.

Van­ish­ing­ly few women are capa­ble of this sort of brav­ery. That’s why I’m dis­ap­point­ed when peo­ple I talk with about this typ­i­cal­ly want to dis­cuss the ex-boyfriend. ​“He’s not the point,” I try to say. ​“That’s the whole point — that he’s not the point. The point of it is her.”