Recently, a Vulture story listed “the seven most messed-up things about Sex and the City.” There are more than seven, of course, but one of the most egregious is a season three episode in which Samantha dates a music executive named Chivon. Samantha is white, Chivon is black, and his sister, Adeena, doesn’t want him dating Samantha. When Adeena confronts her at a nightclub, a fight ensues. The latter tells the former to “get your big black ass out of my face,” adding that the okra she serves at her restaurant—where “Martha Stewart meets Puff Daddy, on a plate,” in the words of Carrie’s voice-over—“wasn’t all that.”

I always took Sex and the City with a grain of salt, but I would be lying if I said I haven’t, oh, watched every single episode at least three times each. And while I never totally identified with the show’s value system, it didn’t seemed as malignant then, for many reasons, as it does in hindsight. The year 2000 doesn’t feel that long ago—clothing styles, at least, haven’t changed much since then (or rather, the limits of what is stylish have stretched enough to accommodate even Carrie’s most inexplicable outfits). But when re-examining the culture I came of age with—music, movies, and television from the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s—it’s easier to see the pitfalls.

It’s obvious now that some of the most beloved bits of the ’90s are totally, totally not okay—so obviously not-okay that they sometimes go overlooked, at least by those they don’t target. Consider Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the manager of Springfield’s Kwik-E-Mart, or Seinfeld’s Babu Bhatt, a Pakistani immigrant whose mannerisms were played up for comic effect (Seinfeld featured at least a handful of gags in which the show’s protagonists try not to seem racist). The ’90s were, in many ways, a progressive time for women—Elaine was a smart, sexually active professional, and Buffy the VampireSlayer, Clueless, and The Craft offered worlds in which girls were the protagonists, and female friendship were often key. Still, these worlds were sometimes marred by terrible sexual politics.

“It’s alright for guys like you and Court to fuck everyone, but when I do it, I get dumped,” says Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character, Kathryn Merteuil, in 1999’s Cruel Intentions, before hitting the nail on the head: “God forbid I exude confidence and enjoy sex.” But Merteuil is the film’s heartless villain, and by the end she is publicly humiliated for her misdeeds. In Can’t Hardly Wait, released a year earlier, justice is served to the malevolent jock when he’s called a “faggot” in front of his classmates. Nerds try to exact revenge on him by knocking him out with chloroform and posing him in photographs that suggest he’s gay.

It’s obvious that cultural products carry germs from the culture they come from, and equally obvious that our culture is, in many ways, afflicted. And yet, it’s easy to ignore the fact that so much of our deepest nostalgia is tainted by the worst of its time. We can acknowledge that the past had its problems without acknowledging that the past was our past. Nostalgia, so blissful in memory, is supposed to be an escape from the wormy world of now, but to rewatch, say, “Homer and Apu,” from the fifth season of The Simpsons, is to remember the times you laughed while a white guy impersonated a South Asian accent.

It goes without saying that it’s important to confront the ugly parts of pop culture, and also to acknowledge the ways we affirmed them—it’s dangerous to not be critical of who we’ve been, or to take stock of where we’ve ended up. Watching Sixteen Candles for the first time, I was horrified by the character of Long Duk Dong—it seemed shocking to me that such an obviously racist caricature could make it into a mainstream flick released just two years before I was born (it seems a lot less shocking to me now). It took me a while longer to realize that Sixteen Candles ends, happily, with a rape.

Of course, just because something—a word, a practice, a joke—is unacceptable in television doesn’t mean it’s not still a social problem. Standards of public decency are just the tip of the iceberg, which is why nostalgia can be constructive: a way to sift out problems that badly need addressing, problems we ignored the first time around. It won’t be long before the shows we watch today will elicit the same reactions in hindsight.

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For guys (unless they’re in engineering school), life is a paradise of sexual opportunity. For women, it’s a wasteland. The old-fashioned custom known as “dating” (as in: guy calls up girl and asks her out next Friday, takes her to a movie and a meal, picks up the cheque, takes her home, kisses her goodnight and, if he’s lucky, gets to third base) is something their grandparents did. Today, people just hook up.

Okay I get that the “guys in engineering school are too nerdy to get laid” thing is a joke, but it’s not funny, it’s outdated. And while it’s true that there are more females than males in university today, saying that it makes school a “paradise of sexual opportunity” for men and a “wasteland” for women is bogus, for a few reasons. First, Wente makes it seem like men are just dogs who think with their penises and will literally sleep with any female who blinks twice at them. That isn’t true; guys have types and “deal-breakers,” too. Second, does Wente think university girls look around campus and pout, “But I wanted to have seeexxxxx tonighttt and there are noooo boyyyyssss“? (We don’t.) Finally, that last line: “Today, people just hook up.” Are you serious? Yeah, sure, young people do that. But to say that “hooking up” is all “young people” do is a major generalization. I have a lot of friends, both male and female, in serious, long-term relationships. Some of them even live together. Some of them even talk about marriage. And we still go on dates! Seriously!

What explains the campus hookup culture? One widely overlooked factor is the scarcity of men. As buyers in a buyers’ market, they’re on the right side of supply and demand. The price they have to pay for sex – in terms of commitment, time and money – is at a record low. Plus, women are more inclined than ever to say yes.

So basically what Wente is saying is that these horny dog-men finally get the sweet deal they’ve always dreamed of: no being nice to girls, just sex! Sure, there are guys out there who only want sex from girls. But there are also guys who like relationships, who only want to hook up with that girl they’ve had a crush on since the first day of class—and they want to date her, too. Even if it’s easier than ever for a guy to get laid without putting any work in, it doesn’t necessarily he’s going to go that route. Also, why are women “more inclined than ever to say yes”? Because we’re just so happy that one of the few guys on campus is talking to us, so we’d better snatch him up before the bitty in the next booth does? Blah.

In economic terms, our unequal desire for sex means that, in the sexual marketplace, men are the buyers and women are the sellers. Until recently, the price was steep, up to and including a wedding ring and a promise of lifetime commitment. In my parents’ generation, the only way for a 22-year-old guy to have a lot of sex was to get married. Today, plenty of 22-year-olds can get all the sex they want for the cost of a pack of condoms.

Okay not all women want marriage oh and also so what?

Dr. Baumeister argues that, throughout history, it was to women’s advantage to keep the supply of sex restricted. “Sex was the main thing they had to offer men in order to get a piece of society’s wealth, and so they restricted sexual access as much as they could, to maintain a high price,” he says in his essay Sexual Economics, Culture, Men and Modern Sexual Trends (with Kathleen Vohs). But as women began to gain power and opportunity, that began to change. Women can now get a piece of society’s wealth on their own. And life for everyone is a lot more fun, because it turns out that, wherever women have more autonomy, people have more sex.

So sex was only ever our way of feeling successful. It was never an act of passion or love or fun. Nope, it was just our way of feeling like we were worth something. Great message.

The changes in gender politics since the 1960s have been good for both sexes. Women got something they really wanted (access to careers and money) and men got something they really wanted (more sex). But this bargain is having some unexpected consequences. Young men are in no hurry to get married. Why should they be? As my dear old dad used to say when I waltzed out the door in my miniskirt, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” I hated it when he said that. But he’d grasped the central principle of sexual economics.

NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. NO.

A lot of women are in no hurry to get married, either. But it might not work out so well for them. They’ve watched too much Sex in the City. They think they’ll still have the same choices at 35 and 40 that they had at 25. They have no idea that men’s choices will get better with age (especially if they’re successful), but theirs will get worse. Believe me, this sucks. But it’s the truth.

WHAT? Saying that we watched too much Sex and the City and therefore have this distorted view of what it is to grow old and have sex and be a woman is actually making me feel queasy. (If Sex and the City misleads anything, it’s how easy it is to make it as a professional writer. There’s no way Carrie could afford all those Manolo Blahniks off a single column.) Also we’re just supposed to accept that while we get super gross and boring once we hit age 30, men get sexy so they’ll be fine—and therefore we need to get him to put a ring on it pronto for fear of living alone? What year are we in?

University is hard. True. Work is hard. True. Being an adult is hard. True. So why is Wente pointing the finger at those of us who are still trying to wade our way through the muck? And if what young men want most of all is sex, then why work hard if they don’t have to? Young men like sex, for sure, but news flash: so do women! If young females are having more sex, it’s probably because they like it. Also is sex really what guys want most of all? If a 22-year-old guy was offered one night of sex or a university degree, do you think he’s going to pick the former? Are men really that shallow? Are my guy friends really just hugging me when I’m sad because they want to get in my pants? Is the barista who told me to have a nice day as I stirred sugar into my Americano really telling me that he’d like to take me into the staff room and have sex with me? If he was, like, should I go back and talk to him?

Does this suit make me look queer?

We’re less than a month away from Pride Week in Toronto, which kicks off with the Dyke March — also known as the Saturday when thousands of half-naked queer women take to the streets between Church and Yonge.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if this mass shedding of clothes isn’t really about celebrating our sexuality and glorying in the freedom of Pride, so much as a rebellion against the minefield that is lesbian fashion.

Contrary to popular belief, there is really no lesbian fashion aesthetic. There’s a “look,” but it’s hard to quantify and even harder to emulate if you’re a newcomer to the scene. It’s one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it things. And it only applies to the shorthaired stereotype-adhering among us; if you’re high-femme, you’re on your own.

Queer women who come out in their 20s instead of in their teens seem to be hit hardest by the lesbian fashion crisis. I have more than one bisexual friend who — accustomed to dressing up to get the attention of men on a Friday night — is entirely at a loss when it comes to dressing for other women. And while it is widely accepted and known that there are gay and bi girly-girls, lesbians are notoriously suspicious of them. Go to a Church Street bar in makeup and a short skirt and if anybody talks to you at all, it’ll be to ask if you got lost on your way to the entertainment district.

Perfect gaydar, no matter what Stanford from Sex & The City would have us believe, is a myth. It depends on being attuned to the most subtle of clues queer people send each other, and even though most of us aren’t dangling colour-coded handkerchiefs from our back pockets anymore, clothes are a big part of those. People who just don’t identify with the latest in queer fashion markers struggle to identify themselves as queer without throwing out their entire wardrobes.

Things are not always so cut and dried even for the more obviously queer-looking among us. Where I come from, lesbians dress fairly uniformly in jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. We signal to one another through lack of effort. In Toronto, where everybody is better dressed — queers included — I spent a lot of time feeling scruffy and inappropriate before finally deciding not to care very much.

Part of the problem is that it’s tough just to find clothes that fit you when you’re boyish looking but shaped like a girl. Men’s clothes are tentlike on us, but women’s clothes are invariably too, well, woman-y. And those perfect-fitting men’s-suits-cut-for-women Shane wears on The L Word? Those don’t really exist.

All of this has me wondering about the stickers that are available all through Pride Week with every conceivable sexual orientation written on them. It’s as if, having shed our clothes and our coded messages about who we might sleep with, we are finally free to wear our identities on our sleeves.

Cate Simpson is a freelance journalist and the web editor for Shameless magazine. She lives in Toronto.