Status Updates From Toxxic

“…rumours of a vaccine. People have been saying - and by people, I mean the carer Isla there's a way men can actually go outside, out into the air and the sun, that the moth threads won' affect us as long as we take some medicine every month.”
Due to Mary that men at facility have opportunity to try it/ access it
Tony’s tone:
Innocent
Excited
Naive
Hopeful

Abuse of power in men’s facility - sexual assault by women carers
Lillian accused by Artemis (note name derived from goddess of chastity. Hunt and wild animals) of becoming to ‘familiar’ with him and it was unwanted
She denied it in public
But removed from Rita and not seen since -not discussed with men and just disappeared

Importance of being able to tell one’s story or PoV
-desire to humanize her actions
-seen as monstrous
Why the vaccine is so polarizing?
Lived with men before
Young men not raised the same way or in patriarchal society at all
-why would it go back to how it was before?

“…you live in the freedom I protected….literally fought. Despite how unfashionable it is to talk about the time before, my story deserves to be told. And I know things about men - things that you, who've grown up without them - couldn't possibly know. I stand in the breach so you can live - because that and so much more is what this vaccination will take from you.”-XX104
40 years after 1st outbreak

“How long before we're back to where we were? Forcing ourselves and our daughters into grotesque shapes to please the greedy eyes of men, pretending that we have it all when really, we work twice as hard for half the reward.”

XX104: political perspective is men shouldn’t be reintegrated into society
-segregation should continue - even w a vaccine
-not afraid of men who are Maniacs but fears you infected men because remembers what life was like as a women before
Unsure if vaccine really will work -big ‘if’

Unpacking that:
-men hunted, raped and murdered their wives,daughters and other women in the most brutal ways possible.
Women in present time have little to no knowledge of the sexual violence women experienced at the hands of men before outbreak or during because they are not taught about it
Women live segregated lives from men entirely
Women in present are already distanced from male violence and outbreak

“When the moths came, they didn' just infect the men, they revealed their true and complete nature.They worked together to hunt us during those first few day of the outbreak. Something glossed over in schools is the sexual violence. The infected, the Manics as they're known, violated women's bodies before slaughtering them.”

Each sentence has so much information for reader both overtly in text and implied

“One day, a long time from now, people might ask
Why did we choose the method we chose- why did I do these terrible things? But those people those women, will ask such questions from a place of safety.”
-XX104
Interesting opening sentence for a novel
-right away points out how we re-examine and make judgements on past actions,historical figures and events from a distance and perspective of present social norms

In order to imagine a new societal system and start from scratch authors often have to imagine some way in which the current system is eradicated.
Often times it’s a viral outbreak that kills the majority of the population or some man-made disaster caused by technology or war.

This text -men are infected by moth threads but women are immune to the effects -spotlight on gendered patriarchal hierarchy

Holy shit this book is already a bit like tender is the flesh in its social and cultural critiques that are imbedded in the narrative but looks at Heteronormative patriarchal gender norms,values and beliefs and how it has created a gendered hierarchy that still exists in the covert biases, social structures, institutions, language, etc in western society

PoV - multiple first person
Each section changes characters- 3 protagonist

1.XX104 Jenn
-prisoner
Done something bad in regards to vaccine program
No name

2. Tony
one of 1st men to test out vaccine
gay(but doesn’t know it)
lived in captivity inside his entire life
1st at prep school then at center
3. Evie-nurse
Characters
1.mae -evie’s wife
2. Mary-patient on E’s ward
Reason xx104 arrested
in coma

Ebook arc copy from netgalley
Book synopsis reminded me of Stephen King and Owne King’s sleeping beauty but written from a women’s perspective and the men go crazy and murder women not women coccons
But gendered division and moths

Was interested in reading based on that and the underlying social commentary on gendered hierarchy existing in society that is seen as a given way of life and not a inherited bias