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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Too many thoughts about this book, so for now my review is this: đ©·đđ. Thank you Jen Winston for being so open and vulnerable to help others feel seen.
I was so excited for this book, but unfortunately it let me down spectacularly. To start, I wish it did a better job of committing to the thesis about bisexuality, greediness, and confusion and weaving that message throughout the book, especially given the title of the book. However, the novel is less about bisexuality and more about Jen Winston personally. As a memoir that is completely fair, but I felt like the book was marketed as a bisexual book, when really it is a memoir about someone who happens to be bisexual. (Along those lines, did anyone feel like the book gave the message that a bisexual isn't really valid or queer unless they're dating someone who isn't a man? I know the author tried to explicitly counter this idea, but the overall arc of the book still gave me that message.)
Other than that, I think @kyndal's review sums it up best: "this book reads like a 280 page Instagram feed or Buzzfeed article written by someone who falls between Florence Given and Lena Dunham. While the author strives for self-awareness for me personally it didn't land rather sounded obtuse and obligatory/self righteous. Winston's upper middle class background underpins its entirety, perhaps making it relatable for some but for me it felt alienating and a flaunting of privilege more than anything." If you love millennial Internet culture, memoirs, and intros to social justice, you might enjoy this book. If you are looking for actual queer theory and social justice works, skip Buzzfeed and go read that instead.
Other than that, I think @kyndal's review sums it up best: "this book reads like a 280 page Instagram feed or Buzzfeed article written by someone who falls between Florence Given and Lena Dunham. While the author strives for self-awareness for me personally it didn't land rather sounded obtuse and obligatory/self righteous. Winston's upper middle class background underpins its entirety, perhaps making it relatable for some but for me it felt alienating and a flaunting of privilege more than anything." If you love millennial Internet culture, memoirs, and intros to social justice, you might enjoy this book. If you are looking for actual queer theory and social justice works, skip Buzzfeed and go read that instead.
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
This book had many interesting perspectives, and some funny moments. Ultimately the white liberalness and millenniallness was hard to bear.
When I say unbearable millennialness Iâm mostly just being a hater though. I know the humour is their culture, but god it hurts to be put through it. Some painful quotes:
(From an email insert) âBi men are the fucking best-y'all have the potential to be traitors to the patriarchy and smash that shit from inside! Ok now im hyped so i g2g lol byeeeeeeâ
âCall me Brendon Urie because I was Panicked! At the Rooftop - I couldnât believe Iâd chosen such an oppressively straight bar.â
âMy experience with cis men has ostensibly become irrelevant (much like cis men themselves-ayo!)â
As for the white liberalness, it unfortunately manifested as real problems as much as we can see Winston is trying not to be the clueless type of white liberal. Two choices I found particularly distasteful were conversations around the Pulse nightclub incident, and around Me Too/the justice system. Both were used as backdrops to Winstonâs insanely more privileged, less traumatic, less dangerous and borderline completely incomparable life experiences. When talking about Pulse in particular she did the pretentious american thing of bringing up the word âsaudadeâ with its tumblr meaning, which americans never seem to realise is not the actual way the word is used in portuguese (as it just means the feeling of missing someone, not any of the nonsense people add to it to sound poetic and sophisticated because they know a word in a different language that has no direct translation in english). It was double awful for her to dare mention it twice when she didnât know these south american people that got killed, it really felt like a tone-deaf way to make a tragedy about herself without even caring to do proper research on it. I considered stopping the book here, it was incredibly insensitive (plus, the tragedy is direct inspiration for Winston deciding to âexplore queernessâ by trying to hook up with a woman for the first time. Insane). It kind of felt like Winston knew they were not the best person to be speaking on such topics (as indicated by the many many calls to read the original works that created the authorâs opinions) but for whatever reason felt compelled to do it anyway - maybe among certain queer circles in 2021 it would have been offensive to not bring up such important social justice topics? With reason or not, it didnât feel worth it, turning the book into a Sparksnotes version of social justice history through the words of someone who is no expert in any of these topics and knows it, where it could have been an earnest and authentic exploration of self.
Also, as much as Winston makes sure to spend time talking about how there is no such thing as bi privilege, which I agree with, I didnât find there to be enough acknowledgement of gender-conforming privilege, which is what most queer people probably mean when they speak of âbi privilegeâ.
Anyway, of course it wasnât all bad. I found Winstonâs reflections of adolescence interesting - I was surprised to relate given I never consciously did anything to impress boys (or anyone except girls I had crushes on) as a young teen. A quote on this: âAs a preventative measure, I spent high school consuming traditionally masculine media, striving to connect with Saving Private Ryan or find meaning in the curb-stomp scene of American History X.
When I say unbearable millennialness Iâm mostly just being a hater though. I know the humour is their culture, but god it hurts to be put through it. Some painful quotes:
(From an email insert) âBi men are the fucking best-y'all have the potential to be traitors to the patriarchy and smash that shit from inside! Ok now im hyped so i g2g lol byeeeeeeâ
âCall me Brendon Urie because I was Panicked! At the Rooftop - I couldnât believe Iâd chosen such an oppressively straight bar.â
âMy experience with cis men has ostensibly become irrelevant (much like cis men themselves-ayo!)â
As for the white liberalness, it unfortunately manifested as real problems as much as we can see Winston is trying not to be the clueless type of white liberal. Two choices I found particularly distasteful were conversations around the Pulse nightclub incident, and around Me Too/the justice system. Both were used as backdrops to Winstonâs insanely more privileged, less traumatic, less dangerous and borderline completely incomparable life experiences. When talking about Pulse in particular she did the pretentious american thing of bringing up the word âsaudadeâ with its tumblr meaning, which americans never seem to realise is not the actual way the word is used in portuguese (as it just means the feeling of missing someone, not any of the nonsense people add to it to sound poetic and sophisticated because they know a word in a different language that has no direct translation in english). It was double awful for her to dare mention it twice when she didnât know these south american people that got killed, it really felt like a tone-deaf way to make a tragedy about herself without even caring to do proper research on it. I considered stopping the book here, it was incredibly insensitive (plus, the tragedy is direct inspiration for Winston deciding to âexplore queernessâ by trying to hook up with a woman for the first time. Insane). It kind of felt like Winston knew they were not the best person to be speaking on such topics (as indicated by the many many calls to read the original works that created the authorâs opinions) but for whatever reason felt compelled to do it anyway - maybe among certain queer circles in 2021 it would have been offensive to not bring up such important social justice topics? With reason or not, it didnât feel worth it, turning the book into a Sparksnotes version of social justice history through the words of someone who is no expert in any of these topics and knows it, where it could have been an earnest and authentic exploration of self.
Also, as much as Winston makes sure to spend time talking about how there is no such thing as bi privilege, which I agree with, I didnât find there to be enough acknowledgement of gender-conforming privilege, which is what most queer people probably mean when they speak of âbi privilegeâ.
Anyway, of course it wasnât all bad. I found Winstonâs reflections of adolescence interesting - I was surprised to relate given I never consciously did anything to impress boys (or anyone except girls I had crushes on) as a young teen. A quote on this: âAs a preventative measure, I spent high school consuming traditionally masculine media, striving to connect with Saving Private Ryan or find meaning in the curb-stomp scene of American History X.
I wanted to become an encyclopedia of cultural references, as if these could camouflage my femininity and let me tiptoe through patriarchy unnoticed. My college prep consisted of reading Rolling Stone cover to cover and downloading every song it mentionedâI needed the full Pink Floyd discography on my laptop in case a guy in my dorm happened to see. I didn't realize that the canon I'd studied to impress men had been designed primarily byâ and for-those men.â
I also found a quote on discussing sex amusing, and wished the topic was more critically explored: âFemale pleasure now also holds a prominent role in the self-care spotlight, where it's positioned as a lightweight act of feminist resistance. The assumption is that, if women and femmes openly share stories of our orgasms (along with our vibrator affiliate links), we're actively smashing the patriarchy and challenging sexist norms.â
Overall, the book definitely didnât go as deeply into the topics that interested me as it could have, and went way too deeply into the rope-tying sex Winston had years ago. This could have still been a four star enjoyable read, but what really remained as a consistent annoying feature was that it was not a self-sustaining book. One of the beauties of a book is being immersed in it, which I found difficult to do when Winston constantly brought up references or other work for me to google. I particularly refuse to google things when told to, so the gaps where understanding of her many pop culture/ queer culture references should be were even more annoying.
I could tell that I was missing some perspective by being genz and not millennial. Sometimes this added to the book, and made me grateful that I essentially speedran my bisexuality acceptance journey and already could have related to 32 year old Jen when I was 17. Maybe thatâs the real disappointment here - I was expecting this book - lore from an older and maybe wiser bisexual - to add to my self-understanding after some reflection, but many times it felt more like it was explaining bisexuality/queerness to the implied straight audience. Funnily enough, I had a similar complaint about In The Dreamhouse, the author of which Winston references a lot.
Anyway, the chapters âBoundaries of a fairy taleâ (i could imagine the concept as a Broad City episode - so fun to read, the writer equivalent of musicians jamming out and just using their skills to make something cool) and âGirl crush: clinical observationsâ (a perfect example of the circles one runs trying to pinpoint aspects of sexuality that can never be truly understood or explained) were great. Iâd read other works of Winston, particularly if they wrote fiction where the millennial humour is not so heavy.
funny
informative
medium-paced
emotional
funny
informative
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced