Why are 10 year-olds administered puberty blockers; 16 year-olds prescribed testosterone; 18 year-olds undergoing double mastectomies? Why has the numWhy are 10 year-olds administered puberty blockers; 16 year-olds prescribed testosterone; 18 year-olds undergoing double mastectomies? Why has the number of "gender surgeries for natal females in the US quadrupled" between 2016 and 2017? Why was there in the UK "a 4,400% rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments" in 2018 (26)?
It is as though we have summarily discarded the core tenets of developmental psychology: the primary job of the adolescent is identity exploration and formation and the area of the brain responsible for reasoning, problem solving, impulse-control, creativity and perseverance, the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until around the age of 25.
"All the institutions we've built to keep young people from making irreparable mistakes have failed them. The universities, the schools, the doctors, the therapists, and even the churches have been won over by a dogged ideology that claims to speak for a more important class of victim" (220). Add to that public libraries, which have systematically censored this book. Parents and others who care for and work with them need to read as much as possible from different angles to be informed of the causes and consequences to make wise decisions. This book is one of few crucial resources.
Journalist author Abigail Shrier is sympathetic to those who from earliest childhood manifest signs of gender dysphoria; they are not her subject. Rather, she is concerned with those girls who rather suddenly choose to identify as trans (T), "non-binary" or male. Shrier intends to challenge and clarify the current narrative regarding transgender through hundreds of interviews with the girls, their parents, school personnel (primary, secondary and tertiary), psychotherapists, surgeons, and those who have proceeded to transition and those who have not.
Shrier explores the many reasons girls wish to abandon their sex. 1. Society portrays women as victims, which leads girls to seek an alternative identity; who wants to be a victim? One prominent T author provides this horrifying definition: "Female is a 'universal existential condition' defined by submitting to someone else's desires" (152). 2. Many adolescent girls struggle to cope with their changing bodies, so they seek to block puberty or remove the offending secondary or even, in the case of internal organs, primary sex characteristics. 3. In contrast to the movement in the 1960s-90s to eliminate sexual stereotypes, many schools are actively teaching promoting stereotypes, some with The Genderbread Person https://www.genderbread.org/. Non-gender conforming girls, "tomboys" are encouraged to view themselves as "really boys" and seek redress, but they lack the understanding that we all subscribe to some gender norms and rail against others. 4. Claiming T identity elevates a girl as more interesting than her peers, granting her the social status she previously lacked and desperately desired, even if only in the online setting. In reality, claiming "non-binary" creates false poles: those who adhere to the culturally conditioned gender norms and those who do not, when none of us adheres to all gender norms. 5. Avoidance and fear of sexual relationships is quite common in girls, more so now that violent porn is ubiquitous. Anorexia is one way of dealing with modifying the body to avoid sex, T is another. The pool of romantic prospects diminishes exponentially for T; lesbians are virtually erased by T. In one all girls school of 500 students in the UK, 15 girls identify as T, none as lesbian. 6. Like many other phenomena documented as far back as the Salem witch trials, with more recent manifestations including eating disorders and cutting, the role of social contagion in Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is empirically proven.
Shrier emphasizes "Social media saturation, anxiety, and depression fell together like so much dry tinder and kindling" to fuel this craze. It's all so easy for girls to learn the scripts on the Internet to know exactly what to say to a therapist and immediately receive prescriptions for testosterone. We don't prescribe liposuction for anorexics. We should be endeavoring to align the disordered mind with the body, "talking about mental illness and clinical management of symptoms" (132), but T have politicized the issue so that by 2015, in Canada, "gender-affirmation therapy" became the standard of care, or else "lose your job and maybe your license" (126). The patient is diagnosing herself and prescribing her treatment.
Do not conflate psychological treatment for gender dysphoria with conversion therapy for homosexuality; they are not related. Nevertheless, I'll take any opportunity to note it is axiomatic in the field of women's sexuality that female sexuality is fluid and male sexuality is more fixed, but, as usual, males control the narrative, so we must all subscribe to the male experience as normative and state that sexuality is fixed in the womb, despite the evidence and lesbians' affirmations of the role of choice . Gender is not sexual orientation and many LGB argue T should not be part of LGB for a variety of reasons.
She can't do it all, but I wish Shrier would follow the money! She never mentions T billionaire Pritzker's role in the T lobby. The money involved is enormous. And the Affordable Care Act in the USA pays for all of it. The blocking of natural processes and removal of healthy organs and tissue is an execrable exhibition of a deplorable lack of ethics in the fields of mental health and medicine! Puberty blockers and lifelong hormone treatments are likely to be quite lucrative for Big Pharma.
We know that sex hormones are crucial to neurological development and a healthy endocrine system (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... ), yet these unscrupulous doctors prescribe Lupron to halt normal puberty, an off-label use not approved by the FDA (164) and testosterone. And the effects are irreversible. If the girl stops taking the testosterone, she remains with "extra body and facial hair," an enlarged clitoris, "deepened voice, and possibly even the masculinization of her facial features" (170). The long term effects we do know about include higher mortality and "heightened rates of diabetes, stroke, blood clots...heart disease," and cancer, especially uterine cancer, lost sexual function, and, of course, sterility.
Then there are the financial rewards to be reaped by surgeons and hospitals from successive surgeries needed to construct and remove sex characteristics. A cavalier attitude is typical of many physicians, but in this field, it prevails. The microsurgery necessary to execute "bottom surgery" is quite complex and has many risks, yet arrogant surgeons without the extra training have the audacity to undertake them. One of Shrier's subjects nearly died; another told of a 19 year-old friend "whose phalloplasty resulted in gangrene and loss of the appendage," lacks genitalia of either sex, and must use "a catheter that empties into a urine bag strapped to her leg" (178). See what a phalloplasty looks like https://www.researchgate.net/figure/T...
Further, from the Medical Dir. of the Center for Transyouth Health in Los Angeles, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy: "'So what we do know is that adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasoned, logical decision,' she says. 'And here's the other thing about chest surgery: If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them'" (172).
No, Johanna, adolescents are neither rational nor logical, and should not be entrusted with giving informed consent for such procedures. And the breast is a complex structure of lobes, lymph nodes, blood vessels, tissues, etc. I sincerely hope you and your clinic are sued for malpractice to the full extent. Shrier predicts that litigation is precisely what it will take to end this. In November, 2020, Britain's High Court agreed that children under 16 years of age are incapable of giving informed consent to medical treatment involving drugs that delay puberty and surgery like mastectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, orchiectomy, chondrolaryngoplasty, etc. Other nations must follow suit to end this madness.
Why do parents succumb? Emotional blackmail and the misguided desire to be supportive. Therapists and the mass media tell parents that their kid will kill themselves unless the parents submit. Shrier does not dedicate as much discussion to the issue of suicide as warranted, but that's due to the lack of evidence. I'll add the data the statistic comes from: "In total 2078 questionnaires promoted by the LGBT community were analyzed, however only 120 of these were transgender people, and only 27 of these were under the age of 26 years old. It is only the results from the 27 young trans people that was reported in relation to suicide. Of these 27 young trans people 13 of them reported having attempted suicide at some point in the past. This is where the 48% of all trans youth attempt suicide stat comes from." The sample size is unacceptable and is not random; hence the study is invalid, as any researcher knows.
Further, these adolescents' anxiety, depression and other comorbidities (co-occurring issues) do not simply go away with transition and often worsen when parents affirm their daughters' claims. There is no evidence that "affirmation ameliorates mental health problems" (117) and "rates of self harm and suicidality did not decrease even after puberty suppression for adolescent natal girls" (118). "Several long-term studies have shown that a majority of children with gender dysphoria [70%] have outgrown it" (134). But all the adults who should be trusted to set healthy boundaries cave.
In chapter 11, "What can be done?", Shrier presents all the data she gathered about what works to prevent adolescent girls from this scourge and to address it where it has already taken root. An outline of points she fleshes out: 1. Don't give her a smartphone. 2. Push back against instead of supporting any claims a teenager makes about her sexuality or gender. Adolescents need boundaries to push against. They need to feel safe but also able to individuate and rebel--contain but enable that rebellion. 3. Oppose gender ideology like The Genderbread Person in your school. It is not innocuous. It introduces and instills a non-fact-based ideology. Schools often will not notify parents of their children's decision to change their name and pronouns. 4. Monitor social media use and emphasize privacy. 5. Consider big steps: "physically move [your] daughters away from the school, the peer groups, and the online communities that were relentlessly encouraging the girls' self-destructive choices." 6. Stop pathologizing girlhood. "A young woman's unruly emotions in her teenage years--the whirlwind fury and self-doubt of female adolescence--may be a feature, not a flaw." For more on this read Lisa Damour's books on girls (and/or my reviews of them). Male experience is regarded as normative in patriarchal societies like ours. "We need to stop regarding men as the measure of all things--the language they use, the kind of careers they pursue, the apparent selfishness..." Women are different; embrace that. 7. Don't be afraid to admit it's wonderful to be a girl. One of the wisest lines in this book: "In a certain sense, we all transition."
As helpful as the book is, Shrier's perspective is journalistic rather than academic, which means that she gave much shorter shrift to topics I desperately wished she had presented in greater depth, like the studies about outgrowing gender dysphoria, comorbidities with other mental disorders, suicide, etc., but in reality, the phenomenon lacks long-term studies with adequate sample size. The issue is new and the damage that can now be inflicted is irreversible. We must not suspend all that we do know about developmental psychology, adolescent development, endocrinology, neurology, etc. for the sake of misplaced compassion for the intransigent minority of T activists.
Shrier does not mention the paradoxical fact that society has chosen to downplay the significance of sexual dimorphism at the same time that medicine is discovering enormous differences between males and females beyond metabolism, bone mass, fat, etc. See page 33: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... Unalterable facts: each sex can only produce sperm or eggs; there are XX or XY chromosomes present in every cell of the body. She makes no mention of the studies going back to the 70's regarding the impact of pharmaceuticals taken by the mother on transgenderism, nor the issue of intersex, often a sidecar to this issue, the prevalence of which is often overestimated but is about .018% (just 50,000 in the USA), according to Dr. Leonard Sax.
Shrier only intimates what is at stake here: the erasure of women. I would plead for an extra chapter. We feminists used to embrace gender neutral language. Now that has taken on a life of its own. As Shrier writes, "Pregnant women are increasingly referred to as 'pregnant people,' and the word 'vagina' replace with the hideous phrase 'front hole'" (153). Look no further than the furor that arose when J.K. Rowling declared that women menstruate. Male forms of words like "hero," "actor," and "comedian" are now considered neutral, but they are NOT; they are male.
Educate yourself and others regarding what else is at stake with T rights (and the so-called Equality Act in the USA). Take a look at this list: https://deadwildroses.com/2019/12/04/...
For those interested in pursuing the topic further: "Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics" by Jungian therapist Marchiano "Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria" by OB/GYN Dr. Littman, challenged on the basis of political correctness but found to be scientifically sound. Ruth Barrett's superb comprehensive anthology, Female Erasure https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Janice Raymond's watershed classic from 1977, Transsexual Empire, available as a PDF online Leonard Sax's work in various books and articles. "Gender is not a spectrum," in AEON Andrew Sullivan's essay on how transgender deconstructs homosexuality, "The Nature of Sex" and participate in the Women's Human Rights Campaign https://womensdeclaration.com/en/about/
I am a former professor of women's studies and have been following this issue for decades and I am alarmed. We must fight it, defend what it means to be female, and oppose the Equality Act in the USA. It effectively promotes precisely this insidious gender ideology, not equality for women....more
It's difficult to resist an anthology of feminist essays about food writing, especially one with essays like "Writing Recipes, Telling Histories" and It's difficult to resist an anthology of feminist essays about food writing, especially one with essays like "Writing Recipes, Telling Histories" and "Understanding the Significance of 'Kitchen Thrift' in Prescriptive Texts about Food." The reader should expect many of the essayists to be academics steeped in Critical Gender Theory (CGT), overly proud of taking the quotidian production and consumption of food as a subject of inflated and overwrought analysis. I kept wanting to ask, "Yes, but so what?" Maybe I've outgrown this unproductive production, but it was generally fun to read.
In the first part, "Purposeful Cooking," we read delightful quotes from the illustrious American food writer MFK Fisher (1908-1992): "Our three basic needs for food and security and love are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot strictly think of one without the others." When we read that recipes are in fact "a highly complex form, one containing discrete parts and serving multiple functions with in a wide range of rhetorical context: ordinary and exceptional, popular and erudite, private and public, practical and literary" (32), what does that contribute? It's a titillating thought-toy for a few seconds...and then? Is that sufficient? This is the problem with so much academic production. It doesn't lead to new understanding or illuminate any aspect of the human experience.
While Goldthwaite tells us that definitions of what it means to be feminist change over time (7), these essays don't explicitly seek to trace them in any way. Abby Dubisar's essay on activists' cookbooks made an attempt, but the logic is flawed. She criticizes cookbook writers in the "new domesticity" movement, who prioritize their rejection of "mass produced consumer capitalism" and embrace of "home and hearth" over their social and peace activism. Moreover, "The key assumption that women should perform cookery duties thus never gets fully questioned" (72). I emphasize that the texts she is using to make her point are cookbooks. A cookbook author's proper focus at the time of writing the cookbook is the production of food, otherwise she or he would be writing something else, a manifesto (or a cookbook of incendiary devices).
The presentist presumption of contemporary superiority to women of the past is troubling. For example, Jennifer Cognard-Black tells us that by reading her grandmother's recipe cards and "analyzing" them, she becomes a "more complex woman reader and writer" able to "honor...critique...change" the world the recipes memorialize (42). Time and again, we see in feminist writing the insertion of patriarchal hierarchies, here the assertion that a woman engaged in academia occupies a higher rung than a woman engaged in creating a home. That must not be a feminist assertion; there are no strata. The obviousness is tiresome: "I argue that all recipe titles and attributions potentially convey a food's ethnicity, class origin, historical period, authorship, and connection to a specific discourse community" (36). Argue? Who would dispute this obvious fact?
The kitchen thrift essay was particularly interesting. "Thrift has much in common with other practices and 'moral goods' such as self-restraint, conservation, and stewardship and 'notions of justice, charity, and the public good.' Understood historically, thrift is a mindful and deliberate approach to daily living that considers the welfare of self and others" (51). To the frugal, it is advisable that "convenience [be] a secondary object (53). We really would do well to recall that.
Kristen Winet's piece on the "shameful act" of culinary tourism was troubling for any number of reasons. She positively lambasts travelers, stating they "veil their colonizing attitudes in curiosity" and quotes bell hooks, who regarded the culinary tourism as "'consumer cannibalism,' a kind of 'Other-eating' that thrives on foreignness and a lack of critical engagement with the people involved in food production and dissemination and can lead to the constant production of cultural difference as a consumable commodity" (103). Yikes. That is absurdly harsh, but it gets worse: "colonialism is pervasive, resilient, and malleable--it leaks into well-intentioned exchanges, inhabits our travels, and benefits the privileged in ways that the privileged are not often even aware of. ...I worry that by not examining new ways of seeing the relationship of Western travelers to their Other-eating, we run the risk of perpetuating a hopelessly superficial non-reflective, inadvertently ignorant perspective....travelers can learn to refuse the us/them framework and upset the packaged idea that the world's foods are there for them to consume as they desire" (112). And if that traveler is male, being served by a female, she has particular vitriol reserved just for him.
It is absolutely true that the typical traveler goes to a restaurant or the market and engages in a transaction, not a relationship, and I have often felt that global travel for short periods with students is akin to touring a human zoo for its lack of genuine and equal human exchange, but to abstain from travel, and this means domestically not merely abroad, unless one can engage authentically is to impoverish our lives significantly.
Winet is the quintessential CGT author. Statements like, "He is in many ways enacting the persona of what communication scholar Jean Deruz likens to a kind of culinary plunderer, someone who is 'greedy to devour the commodified products of other people's home-building practices' by placing himself as the Anglo subject 'reembodying himself in a new location'" (109). Egads, Kristen needs to spend more time outside of the academy.
In contrast, Lynn Bloom draws on feminist culinary autobiographies, like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, to affirm, "Food is the medium of community and generosity... Planning 'beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self indulgence.' 'Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful,' in part because 'a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch of the arm" (97). Again, nothing new, buy lyrically expressed.
And we return to CGT with Abby Wilkerson's essay on the family farm and farmers' markets made some jaw-dropping statements. Her assertion of the off-putting "'heterosexual coupling" visible at the majority of stands" is laughable when most lesbians and probably gay men would point to the downtown farmer’s market as a meeting place. This irritation with "symbolically 'framing heterosexuality as normal'...linking the wholesomeness of sustainable food to the perceived wholesomeness of the hegemonic family form" is an "appeal to pathos." "At best, it fails to challenge heteronormative patriarchal patterns and, at worst, romanticizes them" (125). This sort of absurd statement is typical of CGT. Heterosexuality is normal. Normal means standard or typical. By any metric, heterosexuality is normal; homosexuals are about 3% of the population. Abby commits another affront to the English language with this sentence: "This is not the sense of reproductive futurity as a channel for the transmission for wealth that is integral to heteronormative temporality" (129).
I found the two chapters centered on books I haven't read to be unreadable.
Sylvia Pamboukian's essay focuses on girls in literature who "poison" others. She wants us to see Mary The Secret Garden, Jo in Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and Hermione in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as threats to "hegemonic femininity," that is, selflessness and caregiving. She writes that "girl poisoners display traits not usually associated with good-girl heroines: independence, resilience, and naiveté, and readers warm to them expressly because of these qualities" (158), which is utter nonsense, since those are all classic characteristics of the heroine or shero.
The depiction of alcohol consumption by women on television, according to Tammie Kennedy, serves to "normalize drinking wine as a way for women to navigate the tensions of their personal and professional choices, and this message is reinforced as it circulates throughout various spaces--social media, television/film, gender-based social activities [i.e. book clubs], and domestic drinking practices" (182). The viewer is meant to laugh at the sitcom family ribbing the women's over-consumption of alcohol or be concerned in the dramatic portrayal of the borderline addiction of the high powered professional. Kennedy writes that "wine drinking is equated with success...[and] functions as reward and respite from the emotional complexities for performing women's many roles" (173), helps "to navigate the freedoms and pressures gained from feminist and women's movements, as well as to manage her emotions and modulate her identity within these changing roles" (173). Temperance has historically been a women's issue. Men were the financial providers for the family but drank away their earnings, leaving the family impoverished. Alcohol also fueled their physical violence against their families. "In 2012, Gallup pollsters reported that nearly 66% of all American women drank [alcohol] regularly...purchase nearly two-thirds of the 856 million gallons sold and drink more than 70% of what they buy....women are more likely to drink wine to relax at home after work than men" (172). As Tammie quotes Barbara Ehrenreich, "Going toe to toe with men is a feminist act; going drink for drink with them isn't" (173). This is a deeply concerning trend.
In view of the recent removal of the images of Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and the Native American, the portrayal of Mexican women, Consuelo Carr Salas's essay, "The Commodification of Mexican Women on Mexican Food Packaging" is particularly timely. Salas wants us to see the "imagined nostalgia" that "creates identities for products": "Why do some companies choose to sell their product using a stereotypical image? What is the purpose of the image? Who is the audience of this image? What is communicated by these images?....Each image becomes one more stereotypical portrayal and continuously adds to the collective idea of who Mexicans are" (190). "We as visual rhetoricians, need to examine food packaging in order to recognized how attempts to appeal to the authenticity of a food product can create an essentialized stereotype of certain groups and cultures. Pausing when we encounter food products in the aisles of the grocery store and allowing ourselves to question audience and purpose in conjunction with an analysis of appeals of authenticity will allow for deeper understanding of what these images attempt to do--and allow consumers to question whether they are buying just a product or also stereotypical images of others" (197). I remain unconvinced that consumers are so engaged by the images on the labels of Mexican foods. If I want authentic tortillas, I drive to the tortillería and buy them hot off the grill.
Alexis Baker seeks to understand why the art of Holocaust survivors didn't depict themselves with shaved heads and emaciated bodies and concludes "The soul not the body is the foundation of identity" (202); "the strong sense of self remains intact, regardless of physical conditions of starvation" (210).
Perhaps one of the most troubling entries in the anthology is Morgan Gresham's piece on pro-anorexia websites. She pays particular attention to the House of Thin, created by Mandi Faux, a "transsexual escort model entertainer..." There is not a single mention in Gresham's article that transgenderism and anorexia are both body dysmorphic disorders, comorbid with a host of other mental health issues like depression and OCD. Further, this third wave feminist insists on referring to Gresham as she, which I as a second wave feminist find appalling. Pronouns matter and we must refuse to open the gates to males who desire to colonize our spaces, bodies, and experience. Sex cannot be changed; sex determining chromosomes are in every cell of the body; and the female body cannot be put on like a coat. Beyond that, these websites underscore the current perilous trend among those with disorders like OCD and trichotillomania to embrace them as part of who they are, rather than overcome them. Anorexics are encouraged to make "daily choices about identification." At least this site reinterprets pro ana mia [bulimia] to mean that it encourages "personal development towards a better future" (219), whatever that might mean.
The article on the book Skinny Bitch draws attention to the authors' abusive language, profanity and name-calling, the indictment of "the readers' grotesque identity, intolerable and disgusting in the eyes of the authors" as the readers gain "thinness...self-control and...refined tastes" (236). Rebecca Ingalls compares their techniques with the Bakhtinian grotesque realism that encompasses "excessive corporeality...both decay and rebirth, both shame and merriment, both filth and purity" (223). "The very use of the term 'bitch' in the title of the text could be read as an example of Foucault's 'reverse discourse,' in which a marginalized population...' speak[s] in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or naturality be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary" (229). I'm not buying it.
Any viewer of the BBC2 cooking show Two Fat Ladies, "feminist activists who used cooking as a platform from which to share their polemic" (241) is likely to enjoy Sara Hillin's article. "In this case, cooking and related activities...represent the everyday context from which the two fat ladies produced a complex rhetorical power--one that allowed them to exploit several of the more negative cultural connotations of fatness and somehow build a positive ethos through that very act" (239). They "sought to mobilize and rally others to take up their causes: promoting more ethical manufacturing and sale of meats, educating oneself about health claims related to diet, and ending gender-based size discrimination" (162).
The final essay is on a related fat-positive theme, the subgenre of chicklit that features a plus-size female sleuth as protagonist. As it turns out, there are many subgenres of female detective chicklit with difference emphases and settings: baking, romance, sci-fi, vampire, pizzeria, and coffeehouse. The plus-size sleuth challenges the notion of fat people as "lazy, stupid, and libidinous" (253). "Fatness is a resource--a benefit rather than a liability--and cultural beliefs about fat people are challenged and overturned" (262), along with notions of femininity.
This anthology is worth a read. Skip whatever becomes tiresome and enjoy the rest. ...more
Eve Ensler, renowned author of The Vagina Monologues*, has a distinctive way of writing in vignettes, anecdotes, and brief but revelatory conversationEve Ensler, renowned author of The Vagina Monologues*, has a distinctive way of writing in vignettes, anecdotes, and brief but revelatory conversations. This one reveals the diversity of women's relationships with their bodies and their efforts to comport with some standard of beauty they have in their minds or please a [usually male] partner. In some of the pieces, Ensler implies that women in other countries don't have the same negative baggage toward their bodies that American women do; in others, she reverses that and shows us that they, too, seek to modify some part of themselves, like noses in Iran. We feel the affirmation of women; males be damned! And then we read about the painful vaginal rejuvenation surgery of a woman in L.A. whose husband suddenly takes an interest in her sexually. I could have done without reading that. It's like whiplash, but the purpose is served; the point taken. There is nothing straightforward about women and men and sex and beauty.
Some women will find this book affirming. I found this book hard to relate to and frankly off-putting. In part perhaps it's because am one of those "skinny bitches" she refers to so often. Women of all ethnicities feel no compunction about telling me they hate skinny women like me. That's not very nice. Why is that OK for them to say? I don't hate my body and wasn't taught to be ashamed of my body. It's unfortunate that so many women are.
*The Vagina Monologues has raised tens of millions of dollars for various charities. It was an early (2015) victim of cancel culture because its mention of vagina excludes the vagina-lacking gender dysphoric males who want to masquerade as females. ...more
It is astonishing that so many women daily take a medication that "influences billions of cells at once from head to toe" throughout the body, withoutIt is astonishing that so many women daily take a medication that "influences billions of cells at once from head to toe" throughout the body, without giving thought to the significant consequences these pharmaceutical have on every aspect of their being, how they think, look and behave, "how they see the world...and just about anything else you can possibly imagine." Your likelihood to divorce may even depend on whether you met when you were taking the pill or not. Hormones are powerful chemicals and their impact is far reaching.
Hill, a PhD in the newish field of evolutionary psychology, delivers on her intention to provide information so the reader will be able to "make more informed choices, not just about your health but about who you want to be." She urges women to journal their responses to a series of questions BEFORE they go on the pill and then as they proceed to take it. "This will give you a trail of bread crumbs back to yourself once you're on it." Scary but necessary, as Hill reveals. The reader is sure to have a new understanding of how their bodies work. Some may decide to make alternate plans to address contraception, migraines, acne, cycle regulation, or whatever other problem prompted their taking the pill as a remedy.
In addition to influencing sexual response, attraction and attractiveness, "stress, hunger, eating patterns, emotion regulation, friendships, aggression, mood, learning... relationship satisfaction...it changes who you are. The pill changes ...everything," as we read many, many times in this book. The author proves it beyond any doubt. That's the positive and the negative regarding this book. It is extremely repetitive, with many examples that, while perhaps titillating, are excessive for making the point. We got it the first time, or at least by the tenth, in the second chapter.
Hill's tone is that of a *very* chatty vernacular-using Gen Y girlfriend, who happens to be a scientist, telling you how it is so you understand the impact of these drugs on your body because you mentioned the topic. The first conversation is a revelation, so you express interest, but then she keeps texting, calling, and emailing with more information...it starts to feel like she's stalking you. Have I read this same chapter five times? No, it just feels that way.
She also provides a table of various iterations of the pill and their hormone percentages. Some work perfectly for some women while causing others severe side effects like depression (in the Denmark study, 50% more likely to be diagnosed, even when taking non-oral products like "a patch, vaginal ring, or hormonal IUD"). That's horrifying. Eventually, medications will be prescribed with a specific genome in mind; we aren't anywhere near that point yet.
Hill provides a laudably balanced view. Yes, you are affecting billions of cells in your body and changing who you are in myriad ways, but "the numbers of women applying to law school and medical school skyrocketed once the pill became legally available to single women." There are socioeconomic unintended consequences beside the physiological however, which she addresses in Part III. There's the issue of delaying reproduction and the rise of the $3.5B infertility treatment industry. Since women have made themselves more available sexually, men don't have to work as hard, so they don't, at many things, not just seduction. "Nothing motivates and inspires boys to work hard to develop into respectable, financially independent men more than unfailing commitment to the belief that to do anything otherwise would doom them to a life of involuntary celibacy. When men are able to gain access to women without having had to accomplish or commit to anything first, oftentimes this is the path they will follow." See Baumeister and Vohs (2004) "Sexual Economics" and Regnerus (2017) "Cheap Sex."
Most readers are likely to be unaware that drugs, even those intended for women, are most often tested on men due to female hormonal cycles, which "can easily triple the amount of time and money it takes to answer a research question." "Females make the results too nuanced (since males and females almost never respond the same way to treatments), and the results from females are mechanistically messier (since it is possible that their sex hormones may have influenced their results)." That means it's harder to study females, get funding, be published, etc. So the results for males are generalized to females for all kinds of drugs. And that is a Very Bad Thing indeed for females.
This book should also prompt consideration of the grievous consequences of hormonal blockers and treatments for young gender dysphorics. Male is male and female is female and there are infinite differences between them that can never be bridged. The brain is under construction. Better to bring the disordered mind in alignment with the body that is than try to do the reverse; it can never work. This book makes that abundantly clear.
"Treating the pill as the big deal that it is will require a major course adjustment for all of us. We've been far too cavalier about making changes to women's sex hormones." The steroids that disqualify athletes? Their primary ingredient is a male sex hormone. We know the dangers of steroids; they're illegal without prescription as dangers to public health. But women are on female sex hormones "for years at a time despite all the effects that they have on the body." The birth control issue is not solved. The stakes are high: the effects on a woman's body and control of fertility. Sex hormones are major determinants of the way the brain develops through one's twenties, so the impact on young women of taking the pill is especially serious, but that's not often impressed upon young women.
The main takeaway is try as we might, we can't control Nature without serious pushback and unintended consequences. ...more
This is an essential and comprehensive anthology for any Women's Studies course and would be an engaging read for discussion groups. The diversity of This is an essential and comprehensive anthology for any Women's Studies course and would be an engaging read for discussion groups. The diversity of the voices is superb: varied ethnicities, sexual orientations, profession, attitudes toward trans normativity, areas of focus (spiritual, medical, political, athletic, social, etc.), neuroatypical, gender non-conforming, etc. Janice Raymond's ovular classic, The Transsexual Empire (1979, 1994), provided a comprehensive analysis but pre-dated contemporary dynamics and uncritical acceptance of gender theory and its egregious consequences that threaten to erode and eradicate female identity, safety, private spaces, athletics, representation, and on and on. This provides a powerful counter-narrative to the transgender lobby which is at its core a colonialist and anti-intellectual defense of male rights to women's spaces, women's bodies, women's experience.
First, we must recognize that sex cannot be changed. While the overwhelming majority of these gender dysphorics (>80%) remain intact physically, the surgical removal or alteration of the genitals and internal organs cannot change the XX or XY chromosomes in every cell of the body. It is profoundly ironic that society promotes the notion that there are no differences between the sexes at the same time medicine is finding greater biochemical differences like metabolic rates and reaction to drugs, prevalence of disease, etc. Gender dysphorics have a disordered emotional and cognitive state and their claim to be a sex other than the one determined by chromosomes is not a biological reality. Male is male; female female; there simply is no such entity as a transmale/ transfemale or MtF/FtM, etc. and hence those terms must not be used; male to trans is acceptable. It appears far too complex for people to understand the difference between sex and gender, so the latter word should just be abandoned.
Second, we must comprehend what is at stake when we capitulate to the trans lobby. Chapter 5, "Transgender Rights: The Elimination of the Human Rights of Women," lays the issues out succinctly. The trans lobby is already causing a) a moratorium on the collection of data regarding "sex-based inequalities in areas where females are underrepresented" and the sex of criminals, among others, b) the dissolution of scholarships intended for women (https://www.latimes.com/california/st...), c) the loss of the right to female only spaces like shelters, dressing rooms, locker rooms, restrooms, prisons, hospital rooms, etc. (scores of cases recorded of assaults in such places by males claiming female identity) and c) the right of females to compete against only female bodies in athletic competitions (male bodies won 1st and 2nd place in CT GIRLS' Track State Championship, among many other cases). Title IX was supposed to ensure sexual equity for females in sports but now it is undermined by enabling physical males with greater body mass and strength to claim female "gender" and triumph handily over females in athletic competitions, often the basis for scholarships. The level of testosterone should not be the qualifying factor; it does not change the bone structure, body mass, etc. This is a gross misapplication and misunderstanding of the difference between sex and gender.
Third, we must comprehend that, while feminists DECONSTRUCT the patriarchal assignation of femininity, male to trans CONSTRUCT that assignation and buttress feminine stereotypes with implants, cosmetics and hyper-sexualized appearances and behavior. Male performance of femaleness is the misogynist equivalent of blackface and should be regarded with equal abhorrence. It is estimated that at least one-third of the men claiming to "feel like a woman" are also autogynephiles, people who become sexually aroused at the thought of themselves as women. Many young wimmin have no experience of so-called Butch gender non-conformity and thus identify as trans because they accept the stereotypical construct of femininity, rather than rejecting it and accepting the broad spectrum that is female. It is irresponsible to unquestioningly acquiesce to and enable students to make a claim on trans or non-binary identity. Young women struggle to make sense of their changing bodies and their role in society, too often depicted as consistently oppressed as victimized. Who wants to be oppressed or a victim? They see males as strong leaders and therefore renounce their femaleness.
As feminist consciousness increases, so does the exodus of L from GB - TQ toward NBWHBL (natural born woman, heterosexual, bi, lesbian). There is a growing movement of L away from BG and T because it is becoming increasingly clear that the T movement is about male rights and effectively erases Butch L by compelling them to identify as non-female and blames females for our own oppression because we could simply identify as males to avoid it. We would do well to join with the esteemed Co-Founder of Stonewall, Simon Fanshawe, and oppose the assimilation of the T (and others) in LGB on the grounds they have no commonality. Alarmed by the violent rhetoric promulgated by the trans lobby against them, he supports the exodus of lesbians from the others and asserts that legal and biological issues must not be confused with social identity. It should be underscored that the oppressive regime in Iran leads the world in the surgical alteration of males in a misplaced effort to eliminate homosexuals.
Fourth, we must always ask cui bono, who benefits?, and follow the money. Big Pharma and the medical establishment see that this is a herd of cash cows that will require constant interventions, pharmaceutical and surgical. It is yet another indication of our alienation from and desire to control nature absolutely. The goal should be to bring the body into alignment with the mind. There will be eventual recognition of the horrific malpractice the medical establishment is wreaking through the use of people, especially children, as test tubes and subjects for medical experimentation with endocrine disruptors and puberty blockers. The majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria cease to desire to be the other sex by puberty, with most growing up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, with or without therapeutic intervention.
The turnabout in and lack of comprehension of child and adolescent psychosexual development is astonishing. Psychotherapy is indicated for children and youth with gender issues; it is imperative that it not be conflated with conversion therapy, as the two are as different as sexual orientation and identity. That requires education. Parents [and school staff] too often affirm whatever the child may state because we revel in the idea of our open-mindedness, liberal orthodoxy, and carefully curated diversity, despite the fact it may not be in the best interest of the child. Gender dysphoria is often co-morbid with a history of sexual abuse, dissociative disorder, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. Crucially, international studies conflict regarding whether transition relieves those symptoms in a majority of cases. The studies are too limited in sample size (15 or 30 cases is absurd) and time period to be conclusive.
This anthology is superlative, even though some pieces are more effective than others, as in any collection. The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and its dissolution due to the incursion of male bodies serves as a major touchstone and case study in the trans lobby's demands and prevailing misogyny (see Section Four). We hear the voices of those usually suppressed by the Left's and current feminists' co-optation by the patriarchy, like the woman whose husband decided to transition; instead of sympathy, her pain is derided as bigotry in Chapter 38. We read various anecdotes relating painful decisions to live in congruence with truth. However, the most often repeated argument herein is that males cannot claim to be women or females because they do not share in our oppression (genital mutilation, "sex selective female infanticide, rape, compulsory motherhood, billions of hours of unpaid domestic labor, ...the 'glass ceiling' in business and government" etc. etc.). That frames female experience too negatively and contrasts with so much of the book that is otherwise affirming like "Love Letter to Menarche" and "The Universe is Her Form." Males simply cannot lay claim to an experience that is not and can never be their own and we must not accede or facilitate such a claim. Read this book.
Thank you, Ruth Barrett. Were I still teaching Women's Studies and Feminist Theo/alogy, I would be using your resources. ...more
This author's earlier book, Lower Ed, was so spot-on about for-profit (and pseudo-non-profit) educational institutions, their sales tactics, role in dThis author's earlier book, Lower Ed, was so spot-on about for-profit (and pseudo-non-profit) educational institutions, their sales tactics, role in disadvantaged communities, and impact I recommended it far and wide. This book is a collection of eight essays on a variety of topics.
The titular chapter, Thick, contextualizes the author and her matrix. We learn of her Southern roots and relationship with academia: "Smart is only a construct of correspondence, between one's abilities, one's environment, and one's moment in history. I am smart in the right way, in the right time, on the right end of globalization."
"I have wanted to tell evocative stories that become a problem for power....Excluded as I am from the ethos, logos, and pathos of academia, literary arts, humanities, and Professional Smart People, I have had to appeal to every form of authority simultaneously in every single thing I have ever written." In view of the fact Cottom holds a tenured position at VCU and is a faculty associate at Harvard, the assertion of her exclusion is disingenuous. The percentage of PhDs who obtain a tenured position anywhere is minuscule, so come now, Cottom.
In the distressingly discursive chapter "Beauty," Cottom declares her previous assertion of her ugliness as a means to opt out of the neoliberal, capitalist and necessarily white system validating a certain set of preferences "that compounds the oppression of gender...costs money and demands money....[and] is not useful for human flourishing." Cottom has done those of us who work with girls a great favor by providing us the label "negging" for the behavior of a man who approaches a woman whose "embodied beauty exceeds his own status" issues a backhanded compliment or negative remark intended to destabilize her sense of self, "make her question what power she holds in exchange, and eventually mold her into a more docile subject for sexual conquest." I have already passed this information to a young woman who was thus targeted.
After describing her own tragic experience with childbirth in "Competence," Cottom cites the horrifying figure that "black women are 243% more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes than are white women," without providing any medically explanatory context. While certainly factual that black women are more likely to lack access to healthcare and pre-natal care, they are much more likely to suffer with fibroids, obesity, high blood pressure, stroke, and preeclampsia, not all of which direct result from racial bias.
When writing of Obama and Trump, Cottom underscores the imperative to "Know Your Whites." [White people] "needed only to have faith in [Obama]; in his willingness to reflect their ideal selves back at them, to change the world without changing them, to change blackness for them without being black to them." The election of a Black President allowed White people to feel good about themselves and to construct the illusion that the nation was progressive enough to elect a Black man, though his bi-racial status was imperative. It was almost inevitable that, just as the "tiger bites to remind you that it is a tiger," White America elected Trump after Obama.
The chapter "Black is Over "is echoed by the recent article about Asian-Americans and Affirmative Action in the New York Times (August 2019), where we learn that 2/3 of Harvard's admitted Black students are not descended from people enslaved in the South, whom Cottom terms "black-black", but "ethnic" Blacks, immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa. Where does that leave the native Blacks? "...the false choice between black-black and worthy [ethnic] black....poses that ending blackness was the goal of anti-racist work when the real goal has always been and should always be ending whiteness." How's that again? This statement can be interpreted any number of unfortunate and unintended ways and should be clarified.
Cottom's next two chapters stretch too much for my taste. In "The Price of Fabulousness," "I learned, watching my mother, that there was a price we had to pay to signal to gatekeepers that we were worthy of engaging. It meant dressing well and speaking well." Surely this is more true for women of color, but even a petite blond who is unkempt and speaks poorly will simply not be accepted by the very same gatekeepers. "Who know what I was not granted for not enacting the right status behaviors or symbols at the right time for an agreeable authority?" True for everyone who does not hold authority.
The material addressed in "Black Girlhood, Interrupted" has been written about so widely elsewhere for decades that one wonders why it was included: "people across gender and race see black girls as more adultlike than their white peers...teachers and administrators don't give black girls the care and protection they need. Left to navigate school by themselves because they are 'grown,' these girls are easily manipulated by men." Add to this the responsibility that Black women take on to protect Black men and we have the Catch-22 that has been discussed ad nauseam.
Among the 322 and 370 Twitter accounts followed by writers David Brooks and Jonathan Chiat, only 6 are those of Black women, which Cottom finds outrageous in the chapter "Girl 6." She states, "I wanted a full-time, flat-out sinecure with a black woman in it....at a prestige publication." Brooks began working for a prestige publication in 1986, long before the loss of most journalist jobs to the gig economy. She is right to point out, however, that writing jobs lack stability and health insurance. "The first, best criteria for most entry-level jobs in media-especially at prestige media companies--is a family wealthy enough to afford you the unpaid internship you will have to take to get your foot in the door." "In media as in higher education, we need to believe that all publications matter. And they do, to someone somewhere. But for good or for ill, elite publications are still a thing." The extended implication is that degrees matter, but their prestige matters, too, a fact that is often lost on those whose families lack a history of college attendance in the U.S.
Cottom's work is thoughtful and deserves critical consideration. When she writes, "If my work is about anything it is about making plain precisely how prestige, money and power structure our so-called democratic institutions so that most of us will always fail. That is what my book Lower Ed is fundamentally about. It is what all my work is about." While Cottom writes from her lived experience and incorporates analysis and data, her blind spot is the unfortunately de rigueur tendency to ascribe too much of the injustice to race. That "most of us will always fail" is a fact, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, measurable intelligence, or any of the other human qualities that render each of us an individual. My hope is that we realize the power of collaborating for the common good and rebuild the structure so that more of us are able to realize our human potential instead of emphasizing whatever divides us into warring tribes.
I used to regard the bathroom issue as absurd discrimination until I read McGuire's litany drawn from newspapers of men dressed as women who use femalI used to regard the bathroom issue as absurd discrimination until I read McGuire's litany drawn from newspapers of men dressed as women who use female locker rooms for titillation (and videorecord!), especially the men who choose to go while the girls' swim team is practicing, well within their rights under the law, since they can select the facility of their choice. I checked those reports; they're factual. Now I'm a fierce opponent of Choose Your Own Bathroom We need our own spaces for safety.
I'm a former Women's Studies prof, so most of this was not new to me, but the material that was new made it well worth the read. In the 1990s, I taught the separation of gender from sex, but it's now being used against us to harm women. Title IX was supposed to ensure equity for females in sports but now it is undermined by enabling physical males with greater body mass (See article by Sell, Pound and Hone, 2012) and strength to claim female "gender" and triumph handily over females in athletic competitions, often the basis for scholarships. This is a gross misapplication and misunderstanding of the difference between sex and gender. STOP it!
XX or XY chromosomes are in every cell of the body. Those differences are increasingly recognized in the medical profession as affecting biochemical differences like metabolic rates and reaction to drugs, prevalence of disease, etc. The irony of society promoting the notion that there are no differences between the sexes as the same time medicine is finding greater difference is astonishing (and inconvenient to prevailing ideology). We are different! Why is this construed as a negative, politically incorrect statement? It's a scientific fact.
McGuire discusses the issues arising out of this equation and their relation to women in combat and other physical roles. Reports indicate that between 1 and 6 and 1 in 3 women in the US military is sexually assaulted--by colleague soldiers. And when the physical ability bar is lowered for combat troops, people die. And get hurt--when LAFD lowered the bar, workers comp claims skyrocketed because women did not have the physical strength to do what was needed.
We women cannot compete physically with strong men. The more interesting question is why do we desire to believe that we can? We can do things men cannot do like give birth and have evolved other differences. Look at primates to see the foundational sex differences exhibited in behavior. This is factual. This should not be one of the battlefields for the war on science.
At an all girls Catholic high school in Seattle recently, a girl's father told me he did not want his daughter to be exposed to my comment that girls must not assume they can become intoxicated, dress scantily, and be safe at a frat party. We don't live on Wonder Woman's island. This is the real world and that is a message we DO need to convey, like it or not. I've seen the results of willful ignorance of the facts on campuses and they are tragic. We need to protect ourselves and not imagine that the world is fair and safe.
That being said, it's no wonder so many girls are claiming to be non-binary (ridiculous since we all correspond more or less to masculine/feminine pure types and are somewhere along the spectrum but non-binary establishes a claim in opposition to that spectrum that is narcissistic and attention seeking to be more interesting and complex than the reality). Who wants to be oppressed or a victim? They see males as strong leaders and therefore renounce their femaleness. Employers share society's perception of males as better leaders, better businesspeople and fundraisers, which explains why males are disproportionately hired for leadership, even in all-girls schools, a depressing departure from the adage "If they can see it, they can be it". We need to value femaleness and femininity.
McGuire is a bit strident at times and indulges in occasional deliberate spin and exaggeration, but for many, this will clarify the issues in ways that challenge leftist orthodoxy. ...more
This book does four things well. It demonstrates that the urban left has become so jarringly provincial that it can’t even see the existence of opposiThis book does four things well. It demonstrates that the urban left has become so jarringly provincial that it can’t even see the existence of opposing views, provides excellent examples of how not to use research, shows why it’s imperative to define terms and avoid ivory tower theory argot, and buttresses the worst conservative fears about the rapid devolution of morals in society. It may also illuminate the abysmal state of people's ability to interpret and apply research in the age of abundant information.
Marche is clearly writing only for those within his smug ideological echo chamber and discounts contrary or more balanced views. His claims are so outlandish they make one slam the book down. To wit: the support for gay marriage proceeds from the increasing preponderance of anal [and oral] sex among heterosexual couples, which has decreased “the capacity to hate others for performing those same acts” (68), though Kinsey puts the number at less than 10% of heterosexual couples who have experienced anal sex in the last year. Another: “Almost nobody, except outdated moralists like the Catholic Church, believes that …exchanging sex for money… is inherently wrong” (117), but YouGov reports that 65% of American women say it’s morally wrong.
On pornography, Marche reports that the correlation of pornography with violence against women and the trivialization of rape “have been replicated numerous times in the past thirty years and the arguments…have formed a coherent whole” and then begins the next paragraph with the statement, “Except that the opposite happens” (121). He believes he is successfully refuting the thirty years of data with one study examining the relation of high speed Internet access to a decrease in rape and two studies conducted prior to the Internet.
His lack of clarity is another reason to use this with students as an example of how not to write. “The act of citation has become the act of power. Models in the pages of Vogue may imitate porn starts without fear of being confused with the real thing because the gesture of citation demonstrates how removed they really are…” (88). There is no explanation of what on earth he means to say with “citation” in this context. We can guess but, Marche, use your words! When writing about gay marriage, we have this vacuous but ostensibly profound pronouncement: “Choice against duty. Engagement against obligation. Respect against traditional roles….Choice and engagement and respect are more powerful than duty and obligation and tradition” (70). My, this reeks of gravitas, but what does he mean with those pregnant terms? They are stillborn.
The best parts are Marche’s wife’s occasional commentaries, which are intended to balance the male view, which they do, but they also turned me against him, especially the revelation on pages 191-191 that “in the middle of domestic chaos he can block it out and focus on something important to him” and what that looks like. Yikes.
On one page, Marche expresses idea x and a page or two later its contradiction. This may be a key statement: “Total theoretical incoherence is not necessarily a failing; it may be intellectually honest” (170). Earlier, he wrote, “The intellectual incoherence of third-wave feminism, so far from being a weakness, has been a source of strength—an embrace of life’s messiness, a willingness to ride on the surface of things” (90). Ah, so that’s what this is about. It is fitting that Marche, as contributing editor of Esquire engages in what F. Scott Fitzgerald described in its pages in 1936 as “the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” It’s maddening, but it’s all toward showing that the contemporary status of gender and sex are confusing indeed. And this book doesn’t help clarify it a whit....more
Let me be perfectly clear: "If it makes you happy and/or feels good, do it!" is NOT feminism. Feminism is NOT whatever someone says it is. And what peLet me be perfectly clear: "If it makes you happy and/or feels good, do it!" is NOT feminism. Feminism is NOT whatever someone says it is. And what people think it is now is virtually unrecognizable as feminism to those of us who have been around and know that true feminism effectively challenges patriarchy--the establishment of male experience as normative and the foundation of power upon that conceptual base. Period. Feminism is prophetic; it challenges the status quo of patriarchy and energizes wimmin to create a more egalitarian society that disallows power over in all its dimensions and manifestations: male over female, white over black, two-legged over four-legged, etc. It analyzes. It critiques. It pulls back the curtain and enlightens, however painful that might be.
For many readers, this book will assuredly be an eye-opening and informative herstory and it will be helpful for some introductory Women's Studies classes, though it tends to go on a bit too long with too many examples to illustrate a point. Zeisler has superlative feminist cred as founder of Bitch. She is much more inclusive of wimmin of color than most of the recent authors like Sandberg and Spar (aside: the book by the latter is superior though less well known than the former). Zeisler does an admirable job of enumerating and describing but she just doesn't analyze enough; maybe that's sufficient and the analysis should fall to someone else. She convincingly demonstrates that marketplace-feminism has co-opted and commodified the movement.
What that means is that instead of a feminism that effectively challenges patriarchy, we have performers extolled as feminist icons for unabashedly showcasing their sexuality. (Madonna really did a number on feminism). Instead of the assertion that personal choices have ramifications for all wimmin and expectations for gender roles and the social order, we have women augmenting their breasts and buttocks, proud of their personal power to make a choice to feel more attractive, more sexually appealing. ...All of this is superficial "personal choice" without analyzing the deeper impetus for those choices and how their actions affect society as a whole, which *is* feminism.
Let me be crystal clear: this is not a book for those of us who acquired (and never removed) the lens of gender, race and class analysis back in the 1980s or earlier. It's not for us who wouldn't dream of changing our surnames at marriage in the tradition of becoming male property. It's not for those of us who wonder what on earth happened to the shibboleth "The personal is the political." For us, this is simply a compendium of what we have been observing for the past few decades. The lack of analysis is disappointing, but this is still a worthwhile book for the right audience. ...more
This book is a significant work of herstory, guaranteed to change the way you view Wonder Woman and very likely the whole first wave of feminism.
It sThis book is a significant work of herstory, guaranteed to change the way you view Wonder Woman and very likely the whole first wave of feminism.
It starts with one Harvard-educated sot at the dawn of the field of psychology who invents the lie detector and performs some rather dodgy experiments that get him thrown out of academia for good. He is supported by his harem of three women concurrently, two of them living with him and their children by him. The book does bog down heavily (and seemingly endlessly for several chapters) in the details of his travails and the gobbledygook of early psychology.
The book is at its best when the author reveals the actual development of the Wonder Woman character and not only the roles that various feminists play in the development of the super-shero, but also in media and society in the first half of the 20th century. The life of Margaret Sanger, for one, is interwoven throughout, which is fortunate, one supposes, because without her efforts, this ménage a trois and quatre would either not have been possible or might have resulted in a litter of offspring.
The most distressing and revelatory passage regarding the regarding the constant images of bondage in the strip is to be found on p. 238, where Marston is quoted as writing: “This, my dear friend, is the one truly great contribution of my Wonder Woman strip to moral education of the young. The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound—enjoy¬ submission to kind authority, wise authority, not merely tolerate such submission. Wars will only cease when humans enjoy being bound.”
The rejoinder to that, from an Education professor: “The social purpose which he claims is open to very serious objection…It is just such submission that he claims he wants to develop that makes dictator dominance possible. From the standpoint of social ideals, what we want in America and the world is cooperation and not submission.” Well stated.
In any case, regardless of the reader’s interest in Wonder Woman (I confess to having almost none), this is a compelling account of bohemian 20th century mores in a certain socio-economic milieu, feminism, gender roles, and semiotics. Fasten your seatbelts, lasso, chains, or whatever other means of bondage you might prefer; it is one wild ride in that invisible plane. ...more
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