I thought this speech by Amy Schumer, the actor and comedian, was really poignant and smart, as well as very funny. But it also demonstrates again that self-confidence is bullshit and stupid and everybody should stop pursuing it.

Schumer says,

Now I feel strong and beautiful. I walk proudly down the streets of Manhattan. The people I love, love me. I make the funniest people in the country laugh, and they are my friends. I am a great friend and an even better sister. I have fought my way through harsh criticism and death threats for speaking my mind. I am alive, like the strong women in this room before me. I am a hot-blooded fighter and I am fearless.

But I did morning radio last week, and a DJ asked, “Have you gained weight? You seem chunkier to me. You should strike while the iron is hot, Amy.” And it’s all gone. In an instant, it’s all stripped away. I wrote an article for Men’s Health and was so proud, until I saw instead of using my photo, they used one of a 16-year-old model wearing a clown nose, to show that she’s hilarious. But those are my words. What about who I am, and what I have to say? I can be reduced to that lost college freshman so quickly sometimes, I want to quit. Not performing, but being a woman altogether. I want to throw my hands in the air, after reading a mean Twitter comment, and say, “All right! You got it. You figured me out. I’m not pretty. I’m not thin. I do not deserve to use my voice. I’ll start wearing a burqa and start waiting tables at a pancake house. All my self-worth is based on what you can see.”

But then I think, Fuck that. I am not laying in that freshman year bed anymore ever again. I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story — I will.

The piece gives you just a tiny bit of what it means to be a prominent woman in our culture, and the entitlement people feel to try and tear prominent women down. And I want to believe that Schumer can just maintain the feelings that she mentions in the last paragraph of this excerpt, that she’s never going to be made to feel the way that DJ or those people on Twitter made her feel again. But what I find most touching about the piece is the honesty and vulnerability of that second paragraph. It’s not easy to say that sort of thing, particularly when you’re in a cultural position where, because of your gender and your prominence, many people feel compelled to attack you. It’s the kind of raw honesty that can really help other people be showing them that even super-successful people feel these kinds of feelings. Here’s my question, though. Should the conclusion be that we all wish that Schumer, and others, gain that kind of self-confidence permanently? Or should we realize that self-confidence is a big con that we perpetuate on each other out of fear?

I mean, Schumer is successful by any measure. She’s got a TV show with her name in the title! We don’t have a higher form of validation, in this culture, than celebrity, for good or for bad. But she can have that confidence shaken by some dicknose who spends his time telling fart jokes during drive time radio. You can see that as something wrong with Schumer, or you can see that as something wrong with the basic idea that she’s supposed to feel this weird concept we call “self-confidence.” The problem with those kind of feelings are that they change. My desire for Schumer wouldn’t be that she be able to keep up that pace, but that she be able to get off of the treadmill altogether.

And the whole cult of swag thing, I am still just not buying it. I get the strongest used car salesman vibes whenever somebody starts talking about their swag. I mean, I get that the whole point is to be performative about self-confidence so that you can believe it more. But if you know that it’s a method to project a self confidence you don’t really feel, and if I know it, and if we both know we both know it, then… what’s the point? Look, it’s a harsh world, and I’m happy if anybody can utilize these mental exercises to get through the day. But that’s only valuable if it works, and in my experience, it mostly doesn’t. People who are trying to “fake it until they make it” are usually very obvious. There’s a kind of desperate anxiety to that kind of routine, and in my experience that bubble of false confidence is easily punctured. The wrong person saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Seeing yourself on video. It’s easy. Eleanor Roosevelt said that no one can make us feel inferior without our consent, but we almost always consent. It’s our nature.

All it generally takes to see through swag is just to observe someone in a public space, a social space, and I think you’ll find that it’s a thin mask. The advantage of it is that, if you’re a compassionate person, the observation will make you forgive them for whatever thing they think they need to paper over with this showy self-confidence. But the world isn’t full of compassionate people.

Besides: it may not be the case that literally everyone with what we think of as self-confidence is a jerk, but it’s pretty close. The next line in Schumer’s speech after the excerpt above goes, “I will speak and share and fuck and love and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it.” I don’t begrudge her saying this, given the situation she’s describing, but I find that a pretty jerky thing to say. Lots of people had it in them and never got the breaks she got. Self-confidence is so often married to a false vision that everyone is in charge of their own outcomes and that there is no such thing as luck or privilege. That line reminds me of nothing so much as the culture of “the smartest guy in the room” that so many have identified as being part of the problem in the finance world, a corrosive self-confidence that helped contribute to Enron and the subprime housing crisis…. Sometimes people sell the cult of self-confidence or swag as this arms race against the brodudes who, I’m sorry to say, often possess the genuine article of what we call self-confidence. Like, we’re going to outdo them in their boastful dickishness. Well, first, I don’t think you can outdo them– they’re the masters, they’re goddamn da Vinci when it comes to weaponized confidence. But more importantly: are those the kind of people we want to emulate? Really?

Like I said, I don’t blame Schumer for going for the whole “screw the jealous haters” move. It’s just intrinsic to the form. And that’s the problem: it’s entirely unclear to me that there’s actually such a thing as a projected self-confidence that isn’t ultimately a matter of saying not just “I’m good” but of saying “I’m better than you.” At this point in my life, I frankly don’t think there’s a self-confidence that isn’t ultimately aggressive, that isn’t predatory. It’s a zero-sum gaume.

There is an alternative: self-possession. Self-ownership. Not self-confidence or self-esteem, both of which are just bizarre, fake concepts to me. (I mean how do you spend your day, in that state? Walking around, composing poetry about yourself in your head?) Self-ownership means that everything that you are and do are yours, even when they’re embarrassing or sucky. Everything that’s you is yours, and you become your only judge. Where self-confidence is loud, self-possession is by its nature silent– because the minute you tell other people you have it, you’re giving it to them, and it’s defeated. It’s not something that captures attention at a party. I think that’s worth pursuing, worth wanting. Then you can admit to yourself that everything about you isn’t great, you can in fact admit to yourself that most things about you are pretty much rubbish, really, and your life is kind of a shambles when you take a broader perspective, and to be frank you’re just barely keeping it together, but it’s all yours and things are alright.