Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body by Sara Pascoe

2 reviews

friendly_neighborhood_grandma's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

I loved everything until the last section which i didnt really connect to. This is an amazing book, talking about everything women, science of women and so much social stuff. I loved the way sara pascoe used comedy and explained everything in a way i understood, touched on so many subjects, i could not put it down. Very good book. Do look at content warnings.
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ejb44's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

4.0

  
Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body by Sara Pascoe is a hilarious semi-autobiographical, semi-educational book about her experiences being a woman, what that means to her and the psychology behind sex, relationships, gender and experiences. 

Sara Pascoe is a well-known British comedian who often talks about her relationship, sex life and feminism on stage, and this book is a tangible comedy show. Having listened to the audiobook, read by her, reading this book has felt like a 9 hour Live At the Apollo staring only Sara Pascoe. 

This book engages with extremely sensitive topics, such as motherhood, abortion, rape, being in abusive relationships and various other subjects, but Pascoe manages to add a new light to the topic without it being insensitive to those who have experienced these events. Using scientific evidence for both animals and humans, she explains how what we might deem now as being “just my type” or “typical men” actually has its roots in our ancestorial experiences and ‘survival of the fittest’ tactics. 

While Pascoe puts this new spin on a lot of discussions, she also often highlights how limited or perhaps sexist some of these studies have been. The topics, as reiterated by Pascoe several times, needs a lot more research to be able to fully include on various opinions the authors throw out. 

The greatest aspect of this book was the sheer magnitude of the honesty and transparency. Despite the title having autobiography in it, I don’t think I was prepared for how invested Pascoe was in revealing herself to its readers, and I think that’s a strength in and of itself. Early on, Sara describes her abortion and the relationship she had with sex and her body at the time, and while I was excited about the scientific aspect of it and how women’s bodies cope with that sort of experience, I was left feeling quite emotional. The balance between education and emotion in this book is phenomenal and Pascoe deserves all the love from her readers for being so vulnerable and still making jokes throughout. 

The only issue I would say I had with his book (and I think its most likely because Pascoe perhaps didn’t feel particularly read up on it to discuss it heavily, or because it was not her story to tell), but I wish there was more of a focus on the non-binary aspect to womanhood and the bodily experience of that. The topic was brushed upon in several circumstances, but I think a whole dedicated chapter to the nature of being non-binary or trans in a binary world would have been the cherry on top for this book 

Overall, if you want a good laugh (or cry) whilst also being educated on the female body and experience then this book is exceptional. Having had absolutely no sex education in school and having to figure these things out on their own, I truly wish I had Sara Pascoe talking about the vulva to me, diagram included. 

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