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A review by mariahistryingtoread
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color by Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez
2.0
Note: There is a lot of conflict over the usage of Latinx vs Latine. I use Latinx in this review as that is what Rodriguez uses. I want to go by what she prefers.
Refreshing myself through my notes I realized most of my irritation stemmed from one chapter. While I had some other issues they were less significant in hindsight. I am going to format this review similarly to how I did my review for Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig. I’m going to break it down by what I took away from each chapter so you’ll see my major criticism come up when it’s relevant.
Chapter 1: Voluntourism - volunteering on aid trips that’s main purpose is satisfying the ego of the participants - is bad because it comes from a fundamentally incorrect position: the idea that Brown and Black people are lesser than and as such need white typically Christian society to teach them what's right. Voluntourism really is just neo colonialism. Colonialism involved conquer in the form of forced Christianization as it was always about power rather than a genuine desire to spread the true word and forcing a religion is a good way of getting large swaths of people under your thumb. Voluntourism simply shifts the forced part to the more insidious coerced. It’s also rooted in the idea that Christianity has a 'civilizing' effect as the religions of the Black and Brown people were considered savage by default.
Rodriguez outlines how this has affected her country and people as examples of the impact of such endeavors. The US, like those European countries of old, purposely destabilized Nicaragua in order to install their own puppet dictator, uncaring of the effect he and his successors would have as long as their financial interests were taken care of. This kind of meddling by the US is why voluntourism is even a thing in the first place. The only reason the countries being visited are so badly off that this kind of aid is welcome is because the US stepped in in the first place.
So paradoxically white people want acclaim for fixing something historically they helped create whilst simultaneously upholding the system that allows the US to further disenfranchise these countries.
Chapter 2: Colorism is rooted in anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity. To be visually seen as more Brown or more Black is seen as a bad thing because our worth is judged based on the proximity to whiteness. You are treated better based on how close to white you are perceived to be. In Rodriguez's case she is visibly Brown due to her father's more pronounced Indigenous features resulting in a lot of internalized racism growing up. Especially since the standards are a lot higher when you identify as a woman or are female presenting
In this chapter there was a struggle I had that I also welcomed for it exposed a blind spot for me. In America a lot of racial identities have become homogenized out of convenience and ignorance. On top of that our idea of white people continues to evolve in this country because by moving the goalposts to include more racial identifiers white supremacy is better able to maintain its power. If the standards are established to be continually shifting then it further disenfranchises POC. It becomes impossible to combat since it is allowed to absorb whatever aspects it wants in order to preserve its superiority.
All of that is to say I have a hard time making distinctions about race other than the obvious broader classifications such as Black, Latinx, or Asian. Rodriguez makes a point to untangle the differences between these groups. It's easy to say she's Latinx and call it day. Being Latinx is only the surface. She's mestiza because she has Spanish and Indigenous heritage. She identifies as non-Black Latinx instead, however, because she has an Afro-Nicaraguan great grandmother who has been willfully erased from her family consciousness and she does not want to add to that erasure by claiming a status that ignores the Blackness she has in her blood. She has a great grandfather she knew as a child but had no idea was Indigenous until a discovery by a family member after his passing. The configuration of her identity is so rich and multi-faceted. While I found it confusing at times I loved the way this encouraged me to deconstruct my idea of race because I am clearly missing a lot of nuance to these conversations. By not looking more critically at these distinctions I am unconsciously reinforcing anti-BIPOC colonialist rhetoric.
Chapter 3: Rodriguez covers racial imposter syndrome, a subset of imposter syndrome not explicitly talked about. It's not just feeling like a fraud it's feeling like a fraud because your race has left you unprepared for the white Americanized concept of success. She uses her own problems in grad school to make her point as imposter syndrome became a permanent thing for her when she was suddenly in predominantly white spaces regularly. I am aware that Minor Feelings came out relatively recently and has not had much opportunity to penetrate the public consciousness, however, I want to point out that the titular minor feelings is a better descriptor than ‘racial imposter syndrome’ for what Rodriguez is intimating. Minor feelings is defined as “the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric and therefore untelegenic built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritation of having one's perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed. Minor feelings occur when American optimism is enforced upon you which contradicts your own racialized reality thereby creating a static of cognitive dissonance”. Chapter 4 builds on this concept further.
Chapter 4: Meritocracy is the idea that by working hard enough you will succeed. This is patently untrue for most people regardless of race, but it's especially not true for Brown and Black people. Those in power promote this falsehood because it keeps us from trying to dismantle it. Working in the confines of said system may work for a time but unless you fit into the box of the model minority - even then you face more obstacles than white people do - you will be barred from accessing resources that would help you to achieve the status, acclaim and/or money you deserve for working so hard.
As a BIPOC you are inherently devalued already so when you get into these institutions like higher education you are starting from 0 expected to prove yourself by working up whereas white people get to start at 100 and they decrease. Yet the paradox is people expect you to be at 0 because you're not white yet they treat you poorly if you attempt to climb up because you are not allowed to defy their expectations while simultaneously condemning you for being at 0 even though it's not your fault. You typically will not be lucky enough to have access to what white kids do but it's important not to internalize it as you being the problem. You have to learn to pave your own way to success by framing it as what barriers you can smash through rather than letting gatekeepers bar the way because you don't measure up in their eyes. Meritocracy can work on an individual case by case basis but Brown and Black people should not buy into it as a catch all dogma to live by.
Chapter 5: Respectability politics are an extension of the idea that proximity to whiteness equals success. By acting in a way that is acceptable to white people you gain access to the elusive, honored white spaces. This is because to act 'white' - like I said before an arbitrary metric - is seen as civilized and therefore you are now worth respect. Rodriguez seeks to purposely embrace those behaviors and culture that white people view as distasteful because respectability is faux success. It often means burying your history and burying your actual personality and inflicting strict social rules onto other BIPOC so they are forced to bury themselves as well. It achieves nothing in the long run because white people are never satisfied. They will never appreciate the sacrifice you've made either way. This isn't to shame anyone who code switches because all minorities are forced to do it to some extent - I know I do - but it's important to remember those who don’t are not somehow lesser.
Chapter 6: Most of the chapter is a poignant critique of toxic masculinity with Rodriguez’s complicated relationship to the men in her family taking center stage. It was a very personally impactful chapter as someone who has a similar family dynamic and a cultural background that encourages negative behavior in young men as a means of enforcing patriarchal gender conformity.
Chapter 7: There are many factors that contribute to a person being marginalized and those factors are scaled accordingly because even with many things stacked against you there often is at least one thing you have over another marginalized person. That doesn't mean your problems aren't important, it just means you need to keep perspective when hearing others out.
Chapter 8. This is the chapter I took issue with. It is titled the male gaze and in it Rodriguez discusses sexuality. Her experience was that of a woman raised in purity culture who found her empowerment through sexual encounters with no to little commitment.
Where I have a problem with this narrative is actually rooted in an issue I have with current feminist rhetoric surround sex in general namely the idea that casual sex is inherently a progressive act.
As such I don’t like her framing. She frames her choice to engage in casual sex as a universally empowering thing. She does not discuss any drawbacks and barely touches on anything she did for safety. Nor does she take a deeper look at what exactly is empowering in having meaningless sex with others. Now, I’m not shaming anyone for what they want to do sexually. If you want to only have one night stands or friends with benefits or what have you then go ahead. However, our decisions do not exist in a vacuum. For her this was reclaiming her body after years of allowing others to define what she should be doing. I can absolutely see why that was freeing for her. But, feminism is not about the choices of invididuals. It’s about what is good for all women or the most women possible as a whole.
Why did she feel good after these sexual encounters with men? Because she felt good during the act or because she felt good thinking a man wanted her? How often was she getting off in these situations? Orgasms do not have to happen for two or more people to enjoy sexual activity. Still given the orgasm gap between men and women it feels mighty suspicious that an explanation that conveniently allows for men to not have to concern themselves overly with if their partner orgasms because ‘it’s about the journey’ seems to have arisen. Especially since per the orgasm gap men are much more likely to be orgasming either way. Taking the orgasm gap into account further we have rightfully started to push women to prioritize their pleasure in the bedroom as well. So we tell young women they deserve orgasms as that’s typically a good way of measuring fulfillment in a sexual act yet we simultaneougly promote the idea that swaths of unattached hook-ups are the pinnacle of feminism when statistically it is the least likely situation to end in orgasms because men have no incentive to make it good for the woman since men are socialized to value quantity of sexual encounters over quality.
Women acting like men in this way will never achieve equality for us as aspiring to be like men is flawed. We should be striving for all of us to be better. If you’re having sex for any reason outside of your personal enjoyment, and even then that does not mean it’s the right thing to be doing for your mental or physical health as sex can absolutely be used as an unhealthy coping mechanism, the patriarchy is actually winning.
Rodriguez, in her own words, intentionally decided to 'become a whore' but despite many pages expressing the dangers of purity culture she only spends a single page discussing her transition from it when that is equally if not more important than what created her sexual repression. The reason why she decided this was the proper outlet for her growing past that harmful ideology should be examined further as it’s entirely possible to use sex as a means of ignoring deeper psychological issues.
I’m glad that seems to have worked for her with no lasting repercussions or regrets. However, in her blanket approval she misses the opportunity to have a more important dialogue about how being seen as sexually appealing or having a lot of sex still can be the patriarchy at work because under the effects of the male gaze we are taught that our worth is tied to male validation.
Our current hookup culture is the opposite side of the spectrum from purity culture but it's still all the same continuum where men win. Women are still disproportionately shamed for higher body counts, are still coerced into sexual encounters they do not fully consent to because being sexually adventurous is now an expectation rather than a bonus, and have an increased risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. In this culture men always win as long as they have sex point blank. Regardless of your politics or beliefs sometimes the act of having sex with these men validates their pov because like I said before men are socialized to value the act of having sex above all else.
Indiscriminate sex positivity is not only naive, it’s dangerous. It does not spur you to be discerning or consider downsides because the ability to have as much sex as you can outweighs the pragmatism in doing so. Sex positivity as it stands now has been entirely co-opted by mainstream feminism which aligns with the values of white feminists more than anyone else. It’s inherently selfish and ranks individual feelings higher than the betterment of women overall. Rodriguez falls into this trap by not exploring the topic in its entirety.
She talks momentarily about screening dudes for politics and potential fetishization before sleeping with them but she doesn't talk about birth control options, the growing restrictions on abortion, the stigma against abortions, the fear of pregnancy, hypocrisy in her friend groups (there had to be a few naysayers considering the fact that she had friends who were raised the same as she) or what the actual act felt like. She had such a rigid idea of what sex was supposed to be like before, how did the shift to casual sex affect her psyche? Women have gone on record saying that even after getting married they have felt shame for having sex as years of anti-sex propoganda does not disappear by completing certain milestones. She acts like it was easy to do. Maybe it was, but I’d like her to at least say that it was easy so as not to give the impression it’s always like that when it’s a lot more common to have to work at it.
How did her sexual activity affect her choices in future potential partners? When she decided to pursue a long term relationship again how did this affect her mindset now that her tastes had evolved? She doesn't even talk about her sex life that she had with her first husband. What was so different? Presumably it wasn't good but why wasn't it good? And why doesn't she suggest women try masturbation and self pleasure first? Knowing yourself is the first step towards pleasure with a partner. What made casual sex so appealing for her instead?
Basically I found this chapter much too limiting by presenting all sex positivity as good when that's definitely not the case. It's also a harmful message to impart to Brown and Black girls without all the facts because their sexual promiscuity is inherently viewed differently than that of white girls. The stigma will be worse and harder to shake.
That isn’t to say hook-ups need to or should stop. I am saying that the blanket endorsement needs to come to an end post haste as in their current form they primarily serve men. We need to be far more critical of the culture and be willing to admit the very real risks so that young women are able to make fully informed, educated decisions.
Outside of that I don't feel like this chapter actually had much to do with the male gaze because her encounters with the men - their attitudes, how the one night stands went, the negotiation of boundaries, the gross guys she vetoed, etc - are glossed over. Without including their idea of her, her husband’s idea of her when they met vs the reality or the negatives to casual sex there really is no male gaze to analyze.
Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 are on white fragility and decoloniality respectively. It’s more of the same reiterated before in various chapters. There isn’t a point in diving too deeply.
Overall I’d say the book lacks a lot of supplemental evidence to bolster her points. The first two chapters are the strongest as Rodridguez provided interesting historical context to support her arguments. After that the book becomes increasingly more broad with her life being the main focus tying it together. She places an inordinate amount of weight on her own experiences and she doesn’t seem to have done a lot of reflection in some avenues. It reads a lot like her venting about her personal life under the guise of teaching others. Your past actions can be a great learning tool for others, however, it did not always have that air of pedagogy to justify it. If the synopsis made a point to mention that her own experiences would be so essential I’d have no problems. But it doesn't, which misled me to believe the book would be more factually based.
I struggled a lot with whether or not to adjust the rating to 3 stars. That single chapter really brought the quality down overall as it exposes a lot of other problems in the construction of the book. Then again, it is primarily that one chapter I seriously can’t abide by. In the end I stuck with my 2 star rating because I think it best reflects how abjectly harmful I find that one chapter to be. It would really be a fairly average read barring its inclusion.
I do want to make it clear that while I am Black this book is geared towards Brown Latinx girls above all else. While there are some commonalities every minority group has experiences that are going to be native to them. I am aware that I am part of the demographic this appeals to, but I am not the primary demographic it is intended for. If you found this book transformative or helpful then more power to you. I cannot take that away from you nor do I desire to. I only hope you take to heart what I said about chapter 8.
Refreshing myself through my notes I realized most of my irritation stemmed from one chapter. While I had some other issues they were less significant in hindsight. I am going to format this review similarly to how I did my review for Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig. I’m going to break it down by what I took away from each chapter so you’ll see my major criticism come up when it’s relevant.
Chapter 1: Voluntourism - volunteering on aid trips that’s main purpose is satisfying the ego of the participants - is bad because it comes from a fundamentally incorrect position: the idea that Brown and Black people are lesser than and as such need white typically Christian society to teach them what's right. Voluntourism really is just neo colonialism. Colonialism involved conquer in the form of forced Christianization as it was always about power rather than a genuine desire to spread the true word and forcing a religion is a good way of getting large swaths of people under your thumb. Voluntourism simply shifts the forced part to the more insidious coerced. It’s also rooted in the idea that Christianity has a 'civilizing' effect as the religions of the Black and Brown people were considered savage by default.
Rodriguez outlines how this has affected her country and people as examples of the impact of such endeavors. The US, like those European countries of old, purposely destabilized Nicaragua in order to install their own puppet dictator, uncaring of the effect he and his successors would have as long as their financial interests were taken care of. This kind of meddling by the US is why voluntourism is even a thing in the first place. The only reason the countries being visited are so badly off that this kind of aid is welcome is because the US stepped in in the first place.
So paradoxically white people want acclaim for fixing something historically they helped create whilst simultaneously upholding the system that allows the US to further disenfranchise these countries.
Chapter 2: Colorism is rooted in anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity. To be visually seen as more Brown or more Black is seen as a bad thing because our worth is judged based on the proximity to whiteness. You are treated better based on how close to white you are perceived to be. In Rodriguez's case she is visibly Brown due to her father's more pronounced Indigenous features resulting in a lot of internalized racism growing up. Especially since the standards are a lot higher when you identify as a woman or are female presenting
In this chapter there was a struggle I had that I also welcomed for it exposed a blind spot for me. In America a lot of racial identities have become homogenized out of convenience and ignorance. On top of that our idea of white people continues to evolve in this country because by moving the goalposts to include more racial identifiers white supremacy is better able to maintain its power. If the standards are established to be continually shifting then it further disenfranchises POC. It becomes impossible to combat since it is allowed to absorb whatever aspects it wants in order to preserve its superiority.
All of that is to say I have a hard time making distinctions about race other than the obvious broader classifications such as Black, Latinx, or Asian. Rodriguez makes a point to untangle the differences between these groups. It's easy to say she's Latinx and call it day. Being Latinx is only the surface. She's mestiza because she has Spanish and Indigenous heritage. She identifies as non-Black Latinx instead, however, because she has an Afro-Nicaraguan great grandmother who has been willfully erased from her family consciousness and she does not want to add to that erasure by claiming a status that ignores the Blackness she has in her blood. She has a great grandfather she knew as a child but had no idea was Indigenous until a discovery by a family member after his passing. The configuration of her identity is so rich and multi-faceted. While I found it confusing at times I loved the way this encouraged me to deconstruct my idea of race because I am clearly missing a lot of nuance to these conversations. By not looking more critically at these distinctions I am unconsciously reinforcing anti-BIPOC colonialist rhetoric.
Chapter 3: Rodriguez covers racial imposter syndrome, a subset of imposter syndrome not explicitly talked about. It's not just feeling like a fraud it's feeling like a fraud because your race has left you unprepared for the white Americanized concept of success. She uses her own problems in grad school to make her point as imposter syndrome became a permanent thing for her when she was suddenly in predominantly white spaces regularly. I am aware that Minor Feelings came out relatively recently and has not had much opportunity to penetrate the public consciousness, however, I want to point out that the titular minor feelings is a better descriptor than ‘racial imposter syndrome’ for what Rodriguez is intimating. Minor feelings is defined as “the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric and therefore untelegenic built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritation of having one's perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed. Minor feelings occur when American optimism is enforced upon you which contradicts your own racialized reality thereby creating a static of cognitive dissonance”. Chapter 4 builds on this concept further.
Chapter 4: Meritocracy is the idea that by working hard enough you will succeed. This is patently untrue for most people regardless of race, but it's especially not true for Brown and Black people. Those in power promote this falsehood because it keeps us from trying to dismantle it. Working in the confines of said system may work for a time but unless you fit into the box of the model minority - even then you face more obstacles than white people do - you will be barred from accessing resources that would help you to achieve the status, acclaim and/or money you deserve for working so hard.
As a BIPOC you are inherently devalued already so when you get into these institutions like higher education you are starting from 0 expected to prove yourself by working up whereas white people get to start at 100 and they decrease. Yet the paradox is people expect you to be at 0 because you're not white yet they treat you poorly if you attempt to climb up because you are not allowed to defy their expectations while simultaneously condemning you for being at 0 even though it's not your fault. You typically will not be lucky enough to have access to what white kids do but it's important not to internalize it as you being the problem. You have to learn to pave your own way to success by framing it as what barriers you can smash through rather than letting gatekeepers bar the way because you don't measure up in their eyes. Meritocracy can work on an individual case by case basis but Brown and Black people should not buy into it as a catch all dogma to live by.
Chapter 5: Respectability politics are an extension of the idea that proximity to whiteness equals success. By acting in a way that is acceptable to white people you gain access to the elusive, honored white spaces. This is because to act 'white' - like I said before an arbitrary metric - is seen as civilized and therefore you are now worth respect. Rodriguez seeks to purposely embrace those behaviors and culture that white people view as distasteful because respectability is faux success. It often means burying your history and burying your actual personality and inflicting strict social rules onto other BIPOC so they are forced to bury themselves as well. It achieves nothing in the long run because white people are never satisfied. They will never appreciate the sacrifice you've made either way. This isn't to shame anyone who code switches because all minorities are forced to do it to some extent - I know I do - but it's important to remember those who don’t are not somehow lesser.
Chapter 6: Most of the chapter is a poignant critique of toxic masculinity with Rodriguez’s complicated relationship to the men in her family taking center stage. It was a very personally impactful chapter as someone who has a similar family dynamic and a cultural background that encourages negative behavior in young men as a means of enforcing patriarchal gender conformity.
Chapter 7: There are many factors that contribute to a person being marginalized and those factors are scaled accordingly because even with many things stacked against you there often is at least one thing you have over another marginalized person. That doesn't mean your problems aren't important, it just means you need to keep perspective when hearing others out.
Chapter 8. This is the chapter I took issue with. It is titled the male gaze and in it Rodriguez discusses sexuality. Her experience was that of a woman raised in purity culture who found her empowerment through sexual encounters with no to little commitment.
Where I have a problem with this narrative is actually rooted in an issue I have with current feminist rhetoric surround sex in general namely the idea that casual sex is inherently a progressive act.
As such I don’t like her framing. She frames her choice to engage in casual sex as a universally empowering thing. She does not discuss any drawbacks and barely touches on anything she did for safety. Nor does she take a deeper look at what exactly is empowering in having meaningless sex with others. Now, I’m not shaming anyone for what they want to do sexually. If you want to only have one night stands or friends with benefits or what have you then go ahead. However, our decisions do not exist in a vacuum. For her this was reclaiming her body after years of allowing others to define what she should be doing. I can absolutely see why that was freeing for her. But, feminism is not about the choices of invididuals. It’s about what is good for all women or the most women possible as a whole.
Why did she feel good after these sexual encounters with men? Because she felt good during the act or because she felt good thinking a man wanted her? How often was she getting off in these situations? Orgasms do not have to happen for two or more people to enjoy sexual activity. Still given the orgasm gap between men and women it feels mighty suspicious that an explanation that conveniently allows for men to not have to concern themselves overly with if their partner orgasms because ‘it’s about the journey’ seems to have arisen. Especially since per the orgasm gap men are much more likely to be orgasming either way. Taking the orgasm gap into account further we have rightfully started to push women to prioritize their pleasure in the bedroom as well. So we tell young women they deserve orgasms as that’s typically a good way of measuring fulfillment in a sexual act yet we simultaneougly promote the idea that swaths of unattached hook-ups are the pinnacle of feminism when statistically it is the least likely situation to end in orgasms because men have no incentive to make it good for the woman since men are socialized to value quantity of sexual encounters over quality.
Women acting like men in this way will never achieve equality for us as aspiring to be like men is flawed. We should be striving for all of us to be better. If you’re having sex for any reason outside of your personal enjoyment, and even then that does not mean it’s the right thing to be doing for your mental or physical health as sex can absolutely be used as an unhealthy coping mechanism, the patriarchy is actually winning.
Rodriguez, in her own words, intentionally decided to 'become a whore' but despite many pages expressing the dangers of purity culture she only spends a single page discussing her transition from it when that is equally if not more important than what created her sexual repression. The reason why she decided this was the proper outlet for her growing past that harmful ideology should be examined further as it’s entirely possible to use sex as a means of ignoring deeper psychological issues.
I’m glad that seems to have worked for her with no lasting repercussions or regrets. However, in her blanket approval she misses the opportunity to have a more important dialogue about how being seen as sexually appealing or having a lot of sex still can be the patriarchy at work because under the effects of the male gaze we are taught that our worth is tied to male validation.
Our current hookup culture is the opposite side of the spectrum from purity culture but it's still all the same continuum where men win. Women are still disproportionately shamed for higher body counts, are still coerced into sexual encounters they do not fully consent to because being sexually adventurous is now an expectation rather than a bonus, and have an increased risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. In this culture men always win as long as they have sex point blank. Regardless of your politics or beliefs sometimes the act of having sex with these men validates their pov because like I said before men are socialized to value the act of having sex above all else.
Indiscriminate sex positivity is not only naive, it’s dangerous. It does not spur you to be discerning or consider downsides because the ability to have as much sex as you can outweighs the pragmatism in doing so. Sex positivity as it stands now has been entirely co-opted by mainstream feminism which aligns with the values of white feminists more than anyone else. It’s inherently selfish and ranks individual feelings higher than the betterment of women overall. Rodriguez falls into this trap by not exploring the topic in its entirety.
She talks momentarily about screening dudes for politics and potential fetishization before sleeping with them but she doesn't talk about birth control options, the growing restrictions on abortion, the stigma against abortions, the fear of pregnancy, hypocrisy in her friend groups (there had to be a few naysayers considering the fact that she had friends who were raised the same as she) or what the actual act felt like. She had such a rigid idea of what sex was supposed to be like before, how did the shift to casual sex affect her psyche? Women have gone on record saying that even after getting married they have felt shame for having sex as years of anti-sex propoganda does not disappear by completing certain milestones. She acts like it was easy to do. Maybe it was, but I’d like her to at least say that it was easy so as not to give the impression it’s always like that when it’s a lot more common to have to work at it.
How did her sexual activity affect her choices in future potential partners? When she decided to pursue a long term relationship again how did this affect her mindset now that her tastes had evolved? She doesn't even talk about her sex life that she had with her first husband. What was so different? Presumably it wasn't good but why wasn't it good? And why doesn't she suggest women try masturbation and self pleasure first? Knowing yourself is the first step towards pleasure with a partner. What made casual sex so appealing for her instead?
Basically I found this chapter much too limiting by presenting all sex positivity as good when that's definitely not the case. It's also a harmful message to impart to Brown and Black girls without all the facts because their sexual promiscuity is inherently viewed differently than that of white girls. The stigma will be worse and harder to shake.
That isn’t to say hook-ups need to or should stop. I am saying that the blanket endorsement needs to come to an end post haste as in their current form they primarily serve men. We need to be far more critical of the culture and be willing to admit the very real risks so that young women are able to make fully informed, educated decisions.
Outside of that I don't feel like this chapter actually had much to do with the male gaze because her encounters with the men - their attitudes, how the one night stands went, the negotiation of boundaries, the gross guys she vetoed, etc - are glossed over. Without including their idea of her, her husband’s idea of her when they met vs the reality or the negatives to casual sex there really is no male gaze to analyze.
Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 are on white fragility and decoloniality respectively. It’s more of the same reiterated before in various chapters. There isn’t a point in diving too deeply.
Overall I’d say the book lacks a lot of supplemental evidence to bolster her points. The first two chapters are the strongest as Rodridguez provided interesting historical context to support her arguments. After that the book becomes increasingly more broad with her life being the main focus tying it together. She places an inordinate amount of weight on her own experiences and she doesn’t seem to have done a lot of reflection in some avenues. It reads a lot like her venting about her personal life under the guise of teaching others. Your past actions can be a great learning tool for others, however, it did not always have that air of pedagogy to justify it. If the synopsis made a point to mention that her own experiences would be so essential I’d have no problems. But it doesn't, which misled me to believe the book would be more factually based.
I struggled a lot with whether or not to adjust the rating to 3 stars. That single chapter really brought the quality down overall as it exposes a lot of other problems in the construction of the book. Then again, it is primarily that one chapter I seriously can’t abide by. In the end I stuck with my 2 star rating because I think it best reflects how abjectly harmful I find that one chapter to be. It would really be a fairly average read barring its inclusion.
I do want to make it clear that while I am Black this book is geared towards Brown Latinx girls above all else. While there are some commonalities every minority group has experiences that are going to be native to them. I am aware that I am part of the demographic this appeals to, but I am not the primary demographic it is intended for. If you found this book transformative or helpful then more power to you. I cannot take that away from you nor do I desire to. I only hope you take to heart what I said about chapter 8.