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A review by rapidtra5h
Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
Instead of a real review, I’m going to share a quote that I liked from this book that I also like and write a few sentences about this one:
“There are those of you, the enlightened readers, who will find my willing debasement embarrassing. You will say that my choices are my own and should not be refracted through the lens of my need for men and their approval. They believe that any sexual greed is only my right and should be embraced, that I should simply extricate myself from monogamy, from stern boyfriends and their paternal domination, that I should wallow in my incontinent sexuality and enjoy it without shame.
But both things can be true.
True, yes, that I love to have sex, and that my love of it is not only about the act but about the multitude. I love the sex of knowing someone very well for years and just what will make them crumble and break open, but I also love to have sex with new people for not much more than their newness. I wish, when I leave them, that I could stay and sleep with them a hundred more times until I’ve exhausted all their strangeness, but I know too that the fact I can’t is what makes the meeting so sacred.
Those moments have been the rawest, most tender flaying of myself, a return to the simplicity of what I know to be more or less the point of life, of coming together with another person without care for what the next day will bring, unexpected connection without fear.
True also, though, that despite my often sincerely shameless enjoyment of sexual greed, my promiscuity has sometimes been compelled by self-loathing. By a sudden and desperate need to have my beauty confirmed, because I missed a man and wanted to take revenge revenge on him and on myself for losing him, because I wanted to throw away a good boyfriend I didn’t feel I deserved.
Tedious, I know, to say such things. People talk more and more about female desire nowadays, which we all agree is good, is a step forward. But I am amazed to hear critics upset at any hint that woman’s desire may still be authored in some way by men.
We should, after all, have our own desires, free of men!
Of course we should. I can only imagine; I would love to feel it. I would love to have one moment of want in my life when I am sure what I’m feeling is all my own and nothing to do with men, with what has happened with men in the past, with what they have said about me and my body, what thoughts they have put in my head without me even knowing.
It doesn’t mean that I blame them very much, or excuse myself from blame. Why do I have to call them bad, and myself good, to simply observe what takes place in the world? What power men have had over me seems more like a neutral fact than a reason for me to hate them. And who would I be to hate them anyway? Couldn’t I have made myself immune to them with will and education and pride, in this late century, couldn’t I have had some other great love in my life than for them?
Of course I could, but I did not, and this, my story, is the story of that failure.”
This is one of those books that, had I not related to it, I might have found more fault with it. I related so closely to it at many points that it felt like the author was speaking to me. Acts of Desperation definitely feels like it was written by someone who writes articles about sex, power dynamics in relationships, feminism, etc (as I’m fairly sure Megan Nolan does), which I enjoyed. I would LOVE to get an essay collection out of her. That’s all I got.
TW: emotional abuse and rape.
“There are those of you, the enlightened readers, who will find my willing debasement embarrassing. You will say that my choices are my own and should not be refracted through the lens of my need for men and their approval. They believe that any sexual greed is only my right and should be embraced, that I should simply extricate myself from monogamy, from stern boyfriends and their paternal domination, that I should wallow in my incontinent sexuality and enjoy it without shame.
But both things can be true.
True, yes, that I love to have sex, and that my love of it is not only about the act but about the multitude. I love the sex of knowing someone very well for years and just what will make them crumble and break open, but I also love to have sex with new people for not much more than their newness. I wish, when I leave them, that I could stay and sleep with them a hundred more times until I’ve exhausted all their strangeness, but I know too that the fact I can’t is what makes the meeting so sacred.
Those moments have been the rawest, most tender flaying of myself, a return to the simplicity of what I know to be more or less the point of life, of coming together with another person without care for what the next day will bring, unexpected connection without fear.
True also, though, that despite my often sincerely shameless enjoyment of sexual greed, my promiscuity has sometimes been compelled by self-loathing. By a sudden and desperate need to have my beauty confirmed, because I missed a man and wanted to take revenge revenge on him and on myself for losing him, because I wanted to throw away a good boyfriend I didn’t feel I deserved.
Tedious, I know, to say such things. People talk more and more about female desire nowadays, which we all agree is good, is a step forward. But I am amazed to hear critics upset at any hint that woman’s desire may still be authored in some way by men.
We should, after all, have our own desires, free of men!
Of course we should. I can only imagine; I would love to feel it. I would love to have one moment of want in my life when I am sure what I’m feeling is all my own and nothing to do with men, with what has happened with men in the past, with what they have said about me and my body, what thoughts they have put in my head without me even knowing.
It doesn’t mean that I blame them very much, or excuse myself from blame. Why do I have to call them bad, and myself good, to simply observe what takes place in the world? What power men have had over me seems more like a neutral fact than a reason for me to hate them. And who would I be to hate them anyway? Couldn’t I have made myself immune to them with will and education and pride, in this late century, couldn’t I have had some other great love in my life than for them?
Of course I could, but I did not, and this, my story, is the story of that failure.”
This is one of those books that, had I not related to it, I might have found more fault with it. I related so closely to it at many points that it felt like the author was speaking to me. Acts of Desperation definitely feels like it was written by someone who writes articles about sex, power dynamics in relationships, feminism, etc (as I’m fairly sure Megan Nolan does), which I enjoyed. I would LOVE to get an essay collection out of her. That’s all I got.
TW: emotional abuse and rape.