Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
I enjoyed these essays and while I don’t agree with everything in them, they definitely address some important issues and left me thinking.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I picked up this title when I saw that Chris Evans had picked it up at the suggestions of his ex-girlfriend.
Written just before the #MeToo era, this slim but meaty work which will be recommended to any and all.
p. 5 - We talk about open questions, but there are closed questions, too, questions to which there is only one right answer, at least as far as the interrogator is concerned. These are questions that push you into the herd or nip at you for diverging from it, questions that contain their own answers and whose aim is enforcement and punishment. One of my goals in life is to become truly rabbinical, to be able to answer closed questions with open questions, to have the internal authority to be a good gatekeeper when intruders approach, and to at least remember to ask, "Why are you asking that?" This, I've found, is always a good answer to an unfriendly questions, and closed questions tend to be unfriendly.
p. 7 - The conservative "defense of marriage," which is really nothing more than a defense of the old hierarchical arrangement that straight marriage was before feminists began to reform it, is sadly not just the property of conservatives. Too many in this society are entrenched in the devout belief hat there is something magically awesome for children about the heterosexual two-parent household, when leads many people to stay in miserable marriages that are destructive for everyone within range. I know people who long hesitated to leave horrible marriages because the old recipe insists that somehow a situation that is terrible for one or both parents will be beneficent for the children.
p. 29 - Women get to keep a wider range of emotional possibility, though they are discouraged or stigmatized for expressing some of the fiercer ones, the feelings that aren't ladylike and deferential, and so much else - ambition, critical intelligence, independent analysis, dissent, anger. That is to say, silence is a pervasive force, distributed differently to different categories of people. It underlies a status quo that depends upon a homeostasis of silences.
p. 45 - What we call politeness often means training that other people's comfort matters more. You should not disturb it, and you are in the wrong to do so whatever is happening.
p. 49 - But such films are not described as boys' or men's films, but as films for all of us, while films with a similarly unequal amount of time allocated to female characters would inevitably be regarded as girls' or women's films. Men are not expected to engage in the empathic extension of identifying with a different gender, just as white people are not asked, the way people of color are, to identify with other races. Being dominant means seeing yourself and not seeing others; privilege often limits or obstructs imagination.
p. 52 - The imprisonment echoed the old order in which women were confined to the home and to private life, and public life was men's business. Of course the corollary is the exclusion of men, often, still, from emotional and personal life. Both realms matter, but economic, political, and social power depend on one's standing in the public realm. The revolution is for free movement of everyone, everywhere. It is not finished; it is under way; it has changed all the maps; they will change more.
p. 54 - [Marilyn] Monroe can stand in for any woman, all women who silence, hide, disguise , or dismiss aspects of themselves and their self-expression in pursuing male pleasure, approval, comfort, reinforcement. This is not only erotic business; it's how a woman in the workplace of the classroom or on the street may have learned to navigate around male expectations, knowing if she is too confident, commanding, or self-contained she may be punished.
p. 141 - It isn't a fact universally acknowledged that a person who mistakes his opinions for facts may also mistake himself for God. This can happen if he's been insufficiently exposed to the fact that there are also other people who have other experiences, and they too were created equal, with certain inalienable rights, and that consciousness thing that is so interesting and troubling is also going on inside these other people's heads. This is a problem straight white men suffer from especially, because the Western world has held up a mirror to them for so long - and turns compliant women into mirrors reflecting them back twice life size, as Virginia Woolf noted.
p. 154 - The fathers of the fatherless are legion. You can imagine a parallel universe of non-misogyny, in which men are told that they carry around this dangerous stuff that can blow a woman up into nine months of pregnancy and the production of other human beings, that they are irresponsible, immoral, and lacking in something or other - what is it that women are lacking? - when they go around putting that stuff in impregnable people without consent, planning, or care for long-term consequences. There is not much scolding along those lines, outside of warnings about women entrapping men with pregnancy, which is often a way of describing male withdrawal of responsibility but not of sperm.
Written just before the #MeToo era, this slim but meaty work which will be recommended to any and all.
p. 5 - We talk about open questions, but there are closed questions, too, questions to which there is only one right answer, at least as far as the interrogator is concerned. These are questions that push you into the herd or nip at you for diverging from it, questions that contain their own answers and whose aim is enforcement and punishment. One of my goals in life is to become truly rabbinical, to be able to answer closed questions with open questions, to have the internal authority to be a good gatekeeper when intruders approach, and to at least remember to ask, "Why are you asking that?" This, I've found, is always a good answer to an unfriendly questions, and closed questions tend to be unfriendly.
p. 7 - The conservative "defense of marriage," which is really nothing more than a defense of the old hierarchical arrangement that straight marriage was before feminists began to reform it, is sadly not just the property of conservatives. Too many in this society are entrenched in the devout belief hat there is something magically awesome for children about the heterosexual two-parent household, when leads many people to stay in miserable marriages that are destructive for everyone within range. I know people who long hesitated to leave horrible marriages because the old recipe insists that somehow a situation that is terrible for one or both parents will be beneficent for the children.
p. 29 - Women get to keep a wider range of emotional possibility, though they are discouraged or stigmatized for expressing some of the fiercer ones, the feelings that aren't ladylike and deferential, and so much else - ambition, critical intelligence, independent analysis, dissent, anger. That is to say, silence is a pervasive force, distributed differently to different categories of people. It underlies a status quo that depends upon a homeostasis of silences.
p. 45 - What we call politeness often means training that other people's comfort matters more. You should not disturb it, and you are in the wrong to do so whatever is happening.
p. 49 - But such films are not described as boys' or men's films, but as films for all of us, while films with a similarly unequal amount of time allocated to female characters would inevitably be regarded as girls' or women's films. Men are not expected to engage in the empathic extension of identifying with a different gender, just as white people are not asked, the way people of color are, to identify with other races. Being dominant means seeing yourself and not seeing others; privilege often limits or obstructs imagination.
p. 52 - The imprisonment echoed the old order in which women were confined to the home and to private life, and public life was men's business. Of course the corollary is the exclusion of men, often, still, from emotional and personal life. Both realms matter, but economic, political, and social power depend on one's standing in the public realm. The revolution is for free movement of everyone, everywhere. It is not finished; it is under way; it has changed all the maps; they will change more.
p. 54 - [Marilyn] Monroe can stand in for any woman, all women who silence, hide, disguise , or dismiss aspects of themselves and their self-expression in pursuing male pleasure, approval, comfort, reinforcement. This is not only erotic business; it's how a woman in the workplace of the classroom or on the street may have learned to navigate around male expectations, knowing if she is too confident, commanding, or self-contained she may be punished.
p. 141 - It isn't a fact universally acknowledged that a person who mistakes his opinions for facts may also mistake himself for God. This can happen if he's been insufficiently exposed to the fact that there are also other people who have other experiences, and they too were created equal, with certain inalienable rights, and that consciousness thing that is so interesting and troubling is also going on inside these other people's heads. This is a problem straight white men suffer from especially, because the Western world has held up a mirror to them for so long - and turns compliant women into mirrors reflecting them back twice life size, as Virginia Woolf noted.
p. 154 - The fathers of the fatherless are legion. You can imagine a parallel universe of non-misogyny, in which men are told that they carry around this dangerous stuff that can blow a woman up into nine months of pregnancy and the production of other human beings, that they are irresponsible, immoral, and lacking in something or other - what is it that women are lacking? - when they go around putting that stuff in impregnable people without consent, planning, or care for long-term consequences. There is not much scolding along those lines, outside of warnings about women entrapping men with pregnancy, which is often a way of describing male withdrawal of responsibility but not of sperm.
Another one of those books that people should read but only the people who already know these things read them.
one of the reasons people lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity is the belief that children are the way to fulfill your capacity to love. but there are so many things to love besides one's own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.
this was tough to get through. i'm sorry to say i don't feel like i've gotten anything out of this book.
don't get me wrong: i don't think these were bad essays. it's just that they already feel aged. they don't feel particularly relevant anymore. which is, most likely, such a wonderful indicator, since it means that the world has changed, towards (at least some) women.
i suppose i just expected more than that this from an established essayist. something more compelling. more original. while this book summarizes points we've all heard before, it fails to capture how complicated feminism and just how far it stretches (reproductive rights, rape, harassment, etc). i feel like it oversimplifies the whole thing.
this was tough to get through. i'm sorry to say i don't feel like i've gotten anything out of this book.
don't get me wrong: i don't think these were bad essays. it's just that they already feel aged. they don't feel particularly relevant anymore. which is, most likely, such a wonderful indicator, since it means that the world has changed, towards (at least some) women.
i suppose i just expected more than that this from an established essayist. something more compelling. more original. while this book summarizes points we've all heard before, it fails to capture how complicated feminism and just how far it stretches (reproductive rights, rape, harassment, etc). i feel like it oversimplifies the whole thing.
Such an important read, would recommend it to everyone!
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced