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The Ship That Sailed into the Living Room: Sex and Intimacy Reconsidered
Clean, bright used copy with tight binding. NEVER a library book.
324 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 6, 2009
This woman is a little nutso. Like, she thinks men are unnecessary and if you just were to be on a lesbian compound long enough, you'd learn how to make babies without them. Because really, women are superior so of course we would figure out spontaneous asexual generation of offspring. I mean like, duh!
This book is very anti-monogamy. On the sole evidence that her personal relationship had gotten boring and robotic. Of course it couldn't be her, it had to be the entire idea of monogamous "relationShip". And it couldn't be a challenge and opportunity to grow, it had to be men's fault. (Even though it was a lesbian relationship).
Funny story: my ex-boyfriend raved about this book. He had read it right after a breakup and it really validated him about how messed up relationships can be. I read it and wanted to break up. HA, he was like d'oh.
Of course it wasn't really the book. It was the fact that I'm a lesbian. And he was a dude. It just took me a while to figure that out. (Not that he was a dude. I got that part. The other part.)
This book is very anti-monogamy. On the sole evidence that her personal relationship had gotten boring and robotic. Of course it couldn't be her, it had to be the entire idea of monogamous "relationShip". And it couldn't be a challenge and opportunity to grow, it had to be men's fault. (Even though it was a lesbian relationship).
Funny story: my ex-boyfriend raved about this book. He had read it right after a breakup and it really validated him about how messed up relationships can be. I read it and wanted to break up. HA, he was like d'oh.
Of course it wasn't really the book. It was the fact that I'm a lesbian. And he was a dude. It just took me a while to figure that out. (Not that he was a dude. I got that part. The other part.)
July 28, 2021
when she says ALL SCHEDULING OF ANY KIND is patriarchal youre like 0.0 and then when she says I AM GOD youre like 0.o :)
March 18, 2023
NGL this woman is insane. I appreciated some of the insights she made, but mostly read it for entertainment
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November 12, 2021Not even sure how I stumbled across a recommendation for this fairly obscure book, but I'm glad I did. It's in this weird middle ground between feminist theory and personal memoir. Really, it's one long reflective essay. All the theoretical aspects are intertwined with the author's personal experience, mostly from one particular relationship. Even having read the whole thing, I'm not sure where I stand on most of her claims. If I had to guess, I'd say I agree with a lot of the ideas, but not necessarily the extent to which she takes them.
She writes a lot about how the cultural form of a relationship (a relationShip, according to her) leads to unfortunate outcomes. Like in poetry, the form and the content are connected. Some of these outcomes are loss of individuality, loss of autonomy, and ownership over another person. One insight I found particularly intriguing was the idea that two is the number of people which makes hierarchy most likely to emerge between them, especially when coupled with liberal assumptions of privacy, such the expression of that hierarchy largely happens in the home, rendering it unobserved by others and thus personal rather than political. Typically this hierarchy would involve male domination and female subordination, but she also argues that same sex relationships are not immune to this hierarchy and may in fact be more likely to assume it isn't there and overlook its presence.
She says also that the structure of a relationShip is fundamentally one of assumptions and expectations. Rather than making dozens of individual, small choices, you make one big choice (to be in a relationShip) and then all the other choices, now already made for you, flow from that. So you do things not out of a true, genuine, enthusiastic desire to do do them, or out of love, but because that is simply the thing you do in the situation you're in (of being in a relationShip). You assume and expect things will go a certain way, and then, through your behavior, you reify those preconceived notions. I think she would say that the structure itself erases the potential for individual agency from moment to moment.
Even though she rails against individualism, I think the author (somewhat ironically) ultimately sees a relationShip as something getting in between the love of individuals for one another, and which begins, as a theoretical concept and imagined presence, to exert more influence on behavior and priorities than does the wellbeing of either individual or collective.
She writes a lot about how the cultural form of a relationship (a relationShip, according to her) leads to unfortunate outcomes. Like in poetry, the form and the content are connected. Some of these outcomes are loss of individuality, loss of autonomy, and ownership over another person. One insight I found particularly intriguing was the idea that two is the number of people which makes hierarchy most likely to emerge between them, especially when coupled with liberal assumptions of privacy, such the expression of that hierarchy largely happens in the home, rendering it unobserved by others and thus personal rather than political. Typically this hierarchy would involve male domination and female subordination, but she also argues that same sex relationships are not immune to this hierarchy and may in fact be more likely to assume it isn't there and overlook its presence.
She says also that the structure of a relationShip is fundamentally one of assumptions and expectations. Rather than making dozens of individual, small choices, you make one big choice (to be in a relationShip) and then all the other choices, now already made for you, flow from that. So you do things not out of a true, genuine, enthusiastic desire to do do them, or out of love, but because that is simply the thing you do in the situation you're in (of being in a relationShip). You assume and expect things will go a certain way, and then, through your behavior, you reify those preconceived notions. I think she would say that the structure itself erases the potential for individual agency from moment to moment.
Even though she rails against individualism, I think the author (somewhat ironically) ultimately sees a relationShip as something getting in between the love of individuals for one another, and which begins, as a theoretical concept and imagined presence, to exert more influence on behavior and priorities than does the wellbeing of either individual or collective.
September 26, 2007
A good read in terms of sparking thought around monogamy. Many think of their relationships in terms of levels of ownership, which may or may not be a good idea.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews