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Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'
When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney
1 review
darkmagyk's review against another edition
dark
informative
medium-paced
1.75
I wanted to like this so much, and hiding in it is a lot of really interesting information. But I was hoping, from an actual Egyptologist, less of a storybook take.
There is a great deal of "she probably felt this" or "she must have known that." And sometimes its used as almost a framing device, saying something like "this woman was born around this time, so she probably saw this important contextualizing event." But other times it seems to go directly into personal thoughts and feelings, even though she, rightly, comments that we can't know a lot of the personal details because so much of the record is incomplete and impersonal.
Another great issue with the book is that much of it tries to relate the role of women in an authoritarian monarchy over a four thousand year history with 21st century American politics. Doing it requires a very essentialist view of womanhood, a constant reframe is "women rule differently." But very little is discussed about how gender was constructed in anticent Egypt that give any idea of what that is supposed to mean, its only meant to be seen through 21st century American view.
I've seen some people call this book pop history. I disagree. I think the history is very good, Cleopatra's chapter was my favorite. It's got a true academics desire to argue there favorite theories, but that's not necessary a bad thing when it is identified as controversial, which it normally is. But what it is is pop feminism. Its essentialist, citing women as behaving one way and men as another, when the six women who's stories are told obviously go about things in different ways. It cites the heavily misogynistic field of study Evolutionary Biology that has been criticized and disproven. It also is almost embarrassing how much it tries to frame 6 (maybe, some of them are contested) women coming to power over 4000 years as an improvement on current American politics. I would never claim American is anything close to free of patriarchy, but like the Anticent Egypt described, you can find a handful (more then 6, even, in a much shorter time frame) women who have ascended to #girlboss and the like.
There is a great deal of "she probably felt this" or "she must have known that." And sometimes its used as almost a framing device, saying something like "this woman was born around this time, so she probably saw this important contextualizing event." But other times it seems to go directly into personal thoughts and feelings, even though she, rightly, comments that we can't know a lot of the personal details because so much of the record is incomplete and impersonal.
Another great issue with the book is that much of it tries to relate the role of women in an authoritarian monarchy over a four thousand year history with 21st century American politics. Doing it requires a very essentialist view of womanhood, a constant reframe is "women rule differently." But very little is discussed about how gender was constructed in anticent Egypt that give any idea of what that is supposed to mean, its only meant to be seen through 21st century American view.
I've seen some people call this book pop history. I disagree. I think the history is very good, Cleopatra's chapter was my favorite. It's got a true academics desire to argue there favorite theories, but that's not necessary a bad thing when it is identified as controversial, which it normally is. But what it is is pop feminism. Its essentialist, citing women as behaving one way and men as another, when the six women who's stories are told obviously go about things in different ways. It cites the heavily misogynistic field of study Evolutionary Biology that has been criticized and disproven. It also is almost embarrassing how much it tries to frame 6 (maybe, some of them are contested) women coming to power over 4000 years as an improvement on current American politics. I would never claim American is anything close to free of patriarchy, but like the Anticent Egypt described, you can find a handful (more then 6, even, in a much shorter time frame) women who have ascended to #girlboss and the like.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Adult/minor relationship, Incest, Misogyny, and Sexual violence
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