I am currently reading “Rage Becomes Her” by Soraya Chemaly, and this particular quotes comes from a chapter exploring the ways in which women are objectified in our culture.
“It’s virtually impossible to go through a day without images of girls’ and women’s shellacked, shaved, tied-up, emaciated, and often, if you pause to seriously look, mutilated bodies invading your imagination. Our bodies are used to market everything from toys and clothing, to food and games. Women pose as tables for people to eat off of, chairs for people to sit on, and bicycles for people to ride. And that’s all before the mindlessly sexist and racist fetishising of mainstream pornography, which in its most popular forms frequently eroticises violence.”
The question is, if women are so often portrayed as mere objects, how much room is left to portray our humanity? If minimal social space is given to exploring the notion that women may be intelligent, thinking, and feeling beings, how are we supposed to overcome a culture of objectification?
We are paraded as objects. We have inherited the belief we are objects. We are acting accordingly. It is a seemingly inescapable cage, and it is often to appease yourself within it rather than fight to get out.
‘May men fall to me as this offering falls to you, Greatest Aphrodite. May I know love’s power, if never it’s sweetness’
I have been wanting to read this book for a long time now, and I am happy to say that it did not disappoint!
The Wolf Den, set in Pompeii’s Lunpar, is the first in a trilogy of novels reimagining the lives of women who have been overlooked in history.
Here, we follow Amara through her journey as slave, sold into prostitution after the death of her father plunged her family into poverty, we get to know a woman who is smart, resourceful and willing to do whatever it takes to earn her freedom. Through Amara, we also get to meet the other women at the brothel with her. Each of these women are as well written as Amara, with compelling and complicated histories, and it is not a hardship to fall in love with them in this story.
Harper has managed to navigate the stories of these women, and the brutal lives they have to live quite brilliantly, and with great sensitivity. While the story is set around a brothel, and is about the lives of women who are ‘working’ as prostitutes, the sex scenes are not over the top or grotesque. It is very much a novel where it’s a woman writing for women, with an awareness of exactly what stories need to be told.
I would say it’s a ‘medium paced’ story, but hard to put down once you start reading it! It only took me two days, that that too because I had to stop reading while I was at work, and to sleep
If you enjoyed Circe, Silence of the Girls and Penelopiad, basically if you enjoy classical retellings with a focus on the voices of women, this is the book for you!
In November, we have a newly translated volume of Józef Czapski’s haunting memoirs of the Soviet Starobielsk prison camp and insightful reflections on art making, alongside Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, a delightful surrealist adventure set in the strangest of nursing homes.
The Polish artist, writer, and army officer Józef Czapski became a Soviet prisoner during World War II—experiences he illuminated in Lost TimeandInhuman Land, previously published by NYRB Classics. This new volume includes his memoirs of the doomed men of the Starobielsk prison camp, where he was one of just a few Polish officers to escape execution. Also included are a selection of Czapski’s essays on art, history, and literature.
Beloved by Björk, Ali Smith, and Luis Buñuel, The Hearing Trumpet is a fantastic romp starring an eccentric ninety-two-year-old woman who is institutionalized by her family. But this is no ordinary institution: the buildings are shaped like cakes and igloos, the residents must undergo bizarre religious training, and it houses an ancient, mysterious magic. This feminist fable by the treasured surrealist painter remains one of the most original and inspirational of all fantastic novels.
“Imagining crawling inside them, she fantasized the feeling of the bugs that would cover her arms and legs, burrow inside of her, and how the tree, strong and thick, would embrace her inside its darkness. Weeds and vines and flowers sprouting from her flesh as she pushed her fingers outward toward the warmth of the sun, becoming one with the tree, ancient, beautiful, mysterious. There was a hollowness in Blossom’s chest. As if someone had dug a hole into her sternum in preparation to plant something where her heart was supposed to be before getting distracted, allowing for worms to dig deeper into the soil, for spiders to lay eggs into the crevices of her flesh, and forrot to take place.”
You can post a selfie anytime but how often do you post about women you admire? Posting about them is also a kind of recognition of the struggles they faced (and still do) in creating works that have had such a huge impact on me. Works that explore and dissect struggles as well as the violence young girls and women of all ages still face.
Being a woman, it seems, has become equated with struggle. I don’t know if that’s a challenge I willingly accept but it’s certainly a world I’m born into. Struggles vary for women across the world, found in spectrums of established and unknown grays. But violence is unacceptable for always. It can not be any more black and white than that.
So here are the women who have inspired me as a writer (I’ve published some, yay!!!) and whose works taught me to be brave in contributing my voice and studies to the struggle and challenge of being a woman (working on getting published on that next!)
Gloria Anzaldua
Known for: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory and queer theory.
Marjane Satrapi
Known for: Persepolis series (Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, 2000 and Persepolis: The Story of a Return, 2004; co-directed film adaptation in 2007), autobiographical graphic novels.
Sahar Delijani
Known for: Children of the Jacaranda Tree (novel, 2013)
I intend to do more posts like this in the future. That’s how I intend to support women.
before we get started i would just like to mention that it is my life goal to be chloe gong when i grow up. thank you. /hj /lh
hey y'all! today we are talking about some books that paved the way for female authors and were the face of the feminist movement at different points through history. i haven’t read all of these, but i’ve read extracts of many and i have LOVED them. this is also by no means a complete guide to feminist literature, more like a compilation of books i’ve heard of or that inspired me!
1.A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
this book was written in 1792, before the term ‘feminist’ even existed. she argues against the idea that women shouldn’t be given education, and says that women are essential to society as companions to their husbands and as the people who raise their children. she says that treating women as ornaments or property goes against the moral backbone of society.
2.A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
published in 1929, this book challenges the idea that women are lesser writers because of their gender. woolf sheds light on the years of systemic oppression that have denied women of their opportunities and therefore stifled their voices.
3.The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedman
this book is often credited with sparking the second-wave feminism in the US. published in 1963, it talks about how being feminine was equated to being fulfilled by only marriage, children, sexual activity, and housework. she intended to raise the voices of women across the country and promote female education.
4.This Bridge Called My Back (anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
this book talks about what, today, is considered intersectional feminism from the lens of race. it is an anthology of pieces written by women of colour that challenges 'white feminism’, a movement that primarily involved educated, upper-middle class white women.
“with its collective ethos, its politics of rage and regeneration, and its mix of poetry, critique, fiction and testimony, it challenged the boundaries of feminist and academic discourse.”
5.Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
'Bad Feminist’, published in 2014, talks about the idea of a 'perfect feminist’ and how the feminist movement has created a singular idea of what a progressive woman is. she challenges this idea. she also talks about how pop culture reinforces certain stereotypes about both women and feminists that need to be broken.
6.The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
with sections dedicated to sexual consent, body image, sex work, reproduction, and more, ensler’s work was designed to give a voice to women of many races, identities, and experiences. 'the vagina monologues’ is a play with monologues by different women of different backgrounds and experiences, and has become an important part of the feminist movement.
7.The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
author and philosopher de Beauvoir’s 1949 book began as an autobiographical essay exploring why she thought of herself as a woman first and everything else second. It reclaimed “the problem of woman,” which, as she put it, “has always been the problem of men.”
The void is not something created by patriarchy, or racism, or capitalism. It will not fade away with any of them. It is part of every woman.
“The dark core,” Virginia Woolf named it, writing of her mother. The dark core. It is beyond personality; beyond who loves us or hates us. We begin out of the void, out of darkness and emptiness. It is part of the cycle understood by the old pagan religions, that materialism denies. Out of death, rebirth; out of nothing, something.
The void is the creatrix, the matrix. It is not mere hollowness and anarchy. But in women it has been identified with lovelessness, barrenness, sterility. We have been urged to fill our “emptiness” with children. We are not supposed to go down into the darkness of the core.
Yet, if we can risk it, the something born of that nothing is the beginning of our truth.
The liar in her terror wants to fill up the void, with anything. Her lies are a denial of her fear; a way of maintaining control.
Why do we feel slightly crazy when we realize we have been lied to in a relationship?
Women’s love for women has been represented almost entirely through silence and lies. The institution of heterosexuality has forced the lesbian to dissemble, or be labeled a pervert, a criminal, a sick or dangerous woman, etc., etc. The lesbian, then, has often been forced to lie, like the prostitute or the married women.
It is declared then that man is an animal, and he is the most perfect animal. That according to the laws of survival, a creature wills himself and his species to perfection. (“What was her womanhood,” it is written, “that it could stand against the energy of his manly will.”) That “the stronger and the better equipped… eat the weaker and … the larger species devour the smaller.” And it is stated that if women were not meant to be dominated by men, they would not have been created weaker.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a big deal in feminist science fiction for being one of the first widely popular and critically acclaimed works to do cool shit with sex and gender (which was certainly nothing new, but previous such works had rarely “taken off” the way LHoD did). It was criticized for referring to the genderfluid characters with the indefinite “he,” which was a la mode in style guides at the time, instead of using alternating or gender-neutral pronouns. In time Le Guin came to agree with this criticism; she considered her decision not to take things further one of her biggest literary regrets, stating that “I am haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns.”
I tell you this only because the phrase “I am haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns” is one I think about a lot.
Attention to the meaning of the central male slang term for sexual intercourse—"fuck"— is instructive. To fuck a woman is to have sex with her. To fuck someone in another context… means to hurt or cheat a person. And when hurled as a simple insult (“fuck you”) the intent is denigration and the remark is often a prelude to violence or the threat of violence. Sex in patriarchy is fucking. That we live in a world in which people continue to use the same word for sex and violence, and then resist the notion that sex is routinely violent and claim to be outraged when sex becomes overtly violent, is testament to the power of patriarchy.
bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.
Male sexuality -IS- violence.
also worth noting is that the word “fuck” probably comes from a word meaning “to strike” and some of the synonyms for “fuck” include “bang”, “nail”, and “hit”. also that instead of saying “have sex with [a person]” men will say “destroy that ass/p*ssy/[other disembodied body part]”, that a girlfriend and a firearm may both be referred to as a “piece”, and that men like to boast about how much pain their sexual partner was in afterwards.
the most convincing argument that male sexuality is a form of violence is that men themselves believe it to be so.
“the most convincing argument that male sexuality is a form of violence is that men themselves believe it to be so.“
Short version: Compilation of online comic by the same name (read it here!) starring Superhero Girl, local hero for a small Canadian town. SHG faces entirely too much adversity for one person to handle, ranging from criticism of bystanders to having her job interviews hijacked by ninjas. Throughout it all, she maintains her positive attitude and sense of justice, even if it means working without thanks, recognition, or ability to pay rent.
What I thought: I really didn’t know where this was going at first. I Thought it was just a cute slice-of-life perspective on the superhero genre, and while it is that, it’s not exclusively mundane activity. Sure it’s hilarious to see our heroine upset that her cape shrank in the wash or that she now had a hard-to-explain suntan where he mask covers her face, but there’s also a lot of very real and relatable trouble she carries with her. Mostly this comes in the form of her brother Kevin, who is also a superhero (similar to Superman) but according to everyone, including their mother, “he’s better at it.” In some ways that’s true, he does have a broader range of powers and also the charisma to win the hearts of the people, but in no way does that make him a better person. Whenever SHG tries to point this out, her opinion gets slapped down and diminished on the basis that she must be jealous. She’s endlessly compared to him, always with the phrase “why can’t you be more like him?” thrown in her face, totally discounting all the work that she has done to get so far. You really do begin to feel her rage after a few strips, the unfairness of it boiling steadily throughout the whole volume. Even without her brother in the picture, she’s expelled from university because of the liability she represents (”Our insurance just doesn’t cover ninja attacks”). Once, while she’s fighting a city-destroying alien, she’s stopped by a random skeptic who refuses to acknowledge her as a superhero because, and I’m quoting here, “You just don’t look like one.” She was literally throwing a giant monster into orbit as he spoke. He waited for her to get back to street level so he could tell this to her face. When it was revealed that she was a hero purely out of a sense of justice and not because of some tragic backstory that made her swear revenge against evil, he walks away entirely because she “broke the rules.” Never mind that the city was saved. Or that this was the third time this month she saved it. Skeptical Guy (as she called him) is just as bad as those asshats who accuse women of being “fake geek girls” because they don’t know Mark Hamill’s birthday by heart, or any other stupid and arbitrary standard. Yet her attitude stays strong. At one point she meets her future self, is horrified to discover that the wear on her ego eventually drives her into becoming a villain, and hardens her resolve even further. I’d call this an incredible Girl Power book, suitable for all ages and enjoyable for everyone who has ever been told that their best isn’t good enough.
Read it if you liked: Lumberjanesby Noelle Stevenson, Astro City by Kurt Busiek, Nimonaalso by Noelle Stevenson, IRL (In Real Life) by Cory Doctrow
Short version: Anda is invited to join an all-girls guild in an MMORPG very like World of Warcraft. While there she and another member of the guild take it upon themselves to “clean out” the gold farmers– players who do nothing but sell game resources for real world cash. Anda accidentally befriends one of the gold farmers she had meant to kill, only to discover that the player behind the avatar is a teen like herself, working the gold farm in China under harsh conditions. She is left with the ethical decision to help him and the others in his “office,” which risks alienating herself and losing him his job.
What I thought: I have quite a positive opinion here, but a few details nipped at me. In the very beginning of the story, the guild recruiter calls herself “one of the first girl gamers”–I strongly doubt that. The stereotype of the male gamer who has nothing but contempt for female gamers is there for a reason, but women and girls have been defying that stigma ever since there have been games, of any sort, not just online. Now that’s out of the way, I can gush. What a great story! I loved that the plot really addresses the global aspect of online gaming, how it puts players in touch who would otherwise never have met, makes friends across continental borders, and opens eyes to other ways of living. Anda has sympathy for her Chinese friend’s predicament, and unthinkingly gives him the advice that she would give to an American in the same position, unaware that things are very different in China, with very different consequences for failure. In addition to that, she slowly comes to grasp the notion that bullying is not always obvious, and that it’s possible to take part in it without knowing. What I liked most had to do with Doctrow taking the absolute best part of online game philosophy and running with it, namely the fact that the person you play in the game is a perfect version of yourself. On the surface that means Anda’s avatar has a beautiful body and dresses well, she’s agile and skilled, she is good at her job and is under nobody’s control. In the real world, she lives by her mother’s rules, she wears the same frumpy sweater every day, she’s shy and doesn’t have the courage to stand up for others. But then something wonderful happens: her avatar starts doing the right thing, she helps the Chinese players and accepts the blame when it goes badly, then fixes what she messed up even though it means going to a lot of trouble. Slowly, her avatar becomes a better version of Anda herself, and the two start to blend, first with Anda dying her hair to match her avatar’s, then with an attitude adjustment that makes her a better person in real life. So this is a great story for girls, especially the ones who spend a lot of time online or could be classified as “millennials” by people who use the word distastefully. It’s a good one for anyone who games online, male or female, as a how-to guide on the right way to behave towards your fellow humans, even if you never see their face.
Read if you liked: Lumberjanesby Noelle Stevenson, Fangirlby Rainbow Rowell, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, .hack (Dot Hack) by Koichi Mashimo
I’m putting together a Feminist Starter Pack for my niece for Christmas. She’s only 2 months old but I want to get her these books before anyone else does so she’s ready to go when she’s old enough to understand my sister reading to her.
The only idea I’ve had so far is The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch since she was my first feminist icon. Bonus: the princess’ name is Elizabeth which is my niece’s middle name (after her Grammy B)
What other books could I get her? Something appropriate for a child under 4 that isn’t too extreme and is available in (or ships to) Canada.
I rather enjoy “Zog” by Julia Donaldson. It, like Paper Bag Princess (sooooo good), is a subversion of Princess tropes.
Haven’t read them myself, but when I was looking for books for my nephew (with strong female leads a major point in their favor), these got recced:
I’m not as good with the really little kid books, but for when she’s just a liiiiitttle bit older… Tatterhood was and is one of my favourite collections of feminist fairy tales from around the world. You can also find beautiful illustrated versions of many of the stories it contains. Any princess who goes off to rescue her sister riding a goat and wielding a wooden spoon is the princess for me. One of my favourite books when I was little was Magical Tales from Many Lands, which includes such fabulous stories as Kate Crackernuts and Unanana. It’s got beautiful illustrations, and the stories come from all over the world.
Jane Yolen is a good author to look to for children’s books featuring strong girls. At about eight or nine she’ll be old enough for Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. When she gets to be ten or eleven or so she can start Tamora Pierce.
And The Paper Bag Princess is still one of my favourites. :)
