User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I feel bludgeoned. Sady Doyle takes aim at women in the narrative of women throughout the last 300 years. One doesn't have to look very deeply to see that women are a perceived as the root of evil since humans began walking the earth. Doyle examines the allegories in mainstream consciousness through popular culture and finds that lots of it portrays women in not just negative, but monstrous and diabolical. Doyle says that this is (as always) in service to the maintenance of the patriarchy. Demonizing women makes it less confusing to understand who should be in charge (aka patriarchy--preferably white).
I appreciated the premise which is that women in general are portrayed in books, and movies and other media as evil monsters, villains, or victims. We are rarely heroines, or even capable; we are either bad or helpless. And all these representations help cement a cultural narrative that encourages misogyny. I am a fan of Sady Doyle. I have read some of her essays in other anthologies and I find her to be really smart, articulate, and insightful. But I found the book to be both too much and not enough. Sledgehammered points. Actually, there was a dearth of examples to prove her points which led to over reliance upon the examples presented to demonstrate several points. The examples were overexamined and low and behold they upheld her overall premise exactly to the letter. Of course, there may be other ways to interpret some of the examples besides what Doyle put forth, but that may not support her premise so… In a word, unbalanced and bias. And if someone is not going to provide a full picture, frankly for me this effort seemed more appropriate for an essay rather than a full-length book. That is not to say that the subject is not important or that Doyle's examination is flawed. It is to say that I just didn't find the book particularly compelling or substantive. But there were lots of words that seemed to cover the slightly different nuanced points over and over again. The notion that this review is about how I felt about the book rather than a discussion of content says it all. Not to my tastes...
3.25 StarsRead on kindle
Rating: really liked it
I requested this book from my library when I saw a friend reading it (because honestly, who could resist that title??) and then impatiently waited the 13 weeks for it to be available. And I think the wait was totally worth it. I have been reading a lot more nonfiction books the last few years, on a variety of different topics including a fair bit of feminist work, but this was a very different beast (pardon the pun). This book examines how patriarchal norms have influenced culture and media, and... honestly, a lot of it made me feel ignorant as hell for not noticing the trends myself, especially since I'm a big fan of these genres, and some of the works referenced are ones that I've seen or read multiple times. I don't know if I'll be able to look at a lot of literature, pop culture, and cult classics the same way again. (In fact, it's already begun. My husband watched "Unabomber: In His Own Words" on Netflix the other day, and one of the people interviewed in the documentary was Peter Vronsky, and I was like "Oh shit, that's the dude who demonized Ed Gein's mother!" Hubs was understandably confused as to why I was ranting about a completely unrelated murderer's mom, but I kept a much closer eye out from that point on to see what Mr. "His Mama Made Him" Vronsky had to say about Mrs. Kaczynsky, you can bet that. Turns out... nada. He assigned his blame elsewhere.)
This is my future, folks. After reading this book, the world can never be the same. And I think I'm OK with that. So much of my reading lately has been the kind that teaches me something, helps me to better understand the world and different people's experiences in it, and politics and policies and biases and history, and just... so many things. I read to learn and grow and be a better human.
A lot of that reading is of the soul-crushingly hard to read variety, though. (My other TWO currently reading books are of that type. One of those I just started this morning before work and already highlighted 15 times and nearly had a rage aneurysm 18 pages in. Good times!) So reading THIS book was refreshing because, though it's serious in terms of analysis and subject matter and purpose, it doesn't feel so heavy and brutal (though at times it definitely does get dark as hell!). The way Doyle writes manages to mostly give this a lighter tone and feel, despite the often horrific situations described, without making light of them at all. I don't really know how to describe it, but it could have EASILY gone very dark and soul-crushy, and she managed to not let it. And that's commendable. It felt... conversational. Like a chat between friends, one of whom is like "Oh, let me tell you something about The Exorcist!" And then she proceeds to describe it, and in particular THAT SCENE, in disturbing new terms. Terms that are so obvious once called out, but ones that leave their friend reeling and shocked. (More shocked than the original scene left her, even. You know the one. Yes. THAT one.) Because, when you think about the connotations of how pubescent girls are viewed through the male lens, as though we are ineffable, strange creatures going through some mysterious transformation of body and mind, turning us into unrecognizable, untouchable, unfathomable, and worst, unmanageable OTHERs, it changes EVERYTHING. The "demon possession" is no longer an external thing that happens TO girls, it IS girls.
One criticism I have for this book (and there are only two) is that during her examination and analysis of literature and movies featuring women as either monsters or monstrous, she spoiled the plots of several movies and books that I've yet to experience, despite some of them being classics. I didn't really expect that to be what this book was, and it does somewhat annoy me when writers do this... because I feel like they should know, better than anyone, that every book (and movie) is new to every reader (and watcher) at some point, and there are bound to be readers of THEIR book that haven't read every book (or seen every movie) referenced within it. I would have liked a warning, maybe a head's up list of the books and movies discussed so I could at least enter into this knowingly and willingly, instead of it just being thrown at me.
Now, when I watch these movies or read these books (because I love horror and true crime and gothic classics, and still do intend to do so) I won't have the same experience as I would have otherwise. And partially, that's because I have a different experience every single time I read a book, because I am a slightly different person every day. I have more life under my belt, and more experience, and maybe a new perspective based on something I've read or seen or heard or whatever. And so, having read this, my experience reading any book going forward will be altered, now that my attention has been drawn to these issues... But it will also suffer knowing some of the influences and stories BEHIND the inspiration for the work(s), as well as the plot of some of them. And that's something I wish I didn't necessarily have going in. Oh well.
My other criticism is that I felt that Doyle got a bit hyperbolic occasionally, and even if it's justified (which I think it is in a lot of cases) I don't think that it was justified well enough in the text for that particular statement or conclusion. It's like "I make this statement, and based on everything else I've said before, you should just go with it." An example:
"True crime, like the slashers, require a dead girl."
No... they don't. That's a patently false statement that comes across as sensationalist. True crime just requires a crime, and someone to investigate it and provide the story a medium for retelling. Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 men, and has nearly as many books written about him (based on my 10 seconds of Googling). I consider myself a feminist and I'm OK with taking a certain amount of liberty in interpretation of attitudes and social norms etc, but I also strive to be fair and as accurate as I can be with my arguably non-expert self when it comes to verifiable, objective fact.
That being said, I found the great majority of Doyle's arguments to be well-reasoned and persuasive. I highlighted the hell out of this book, and made a ton of notes (INCLUDING the entire bibliography and movie reference list, because I am just that kind of nerd.) There were a lot of sections that I found myself wishing that she'd analyzed this book or that movie. I really, REALLY want to know how she would view some of the characters, and OH MAN, I would love to see what she has to say about King's "feminist" book "Sleeping Beauties". I bet it would be a glorious takedown that would be magnificent to behold. Alas, I'll just have to imagine it in my mind and be satisfied with my own rant about it.
One thing that Doyle absolutely got right in HER feminist book that King absolutely got wrong in his is the fact that trans and non-binary people exist. I loved the inclusivity and acceptance of every kind of feminist, no matter what their body looks like or what their birth certificate says. I really appreciated that.
Anyway, for the most part I really loved this, and I wish that I could articulate effectively all the thoughts and impressions that I had while reading it, though we'd be here a long time if I did... but I won't. Instead, I'll leave you with this anecdote:
I started reading this on my mom's birthday (unintentionally, it just worked out like that because I was on a plane and needed something to read and this had jumped to the top of my list by being available FINALLY from the library) and when I took her out for lunch a few days later (We had to work and I took her on the weekend... I'm not a monster! Oh wait... Apparently I am. O_O) I told her that I was reading a book called "Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers" and she was like "Which one am I?" I laughed and said, "Well... you're not blonde... soooo...." Poor mom. She walked right into it.
Rating: really liked it
The apocalypse is female.This book was pretty incredible and totally engaging. Doyle does a phenomenal job in both keeping the reader totally enthralled to argue a very specific point: marriage, culture, reproduction and female power have been in complete subjugation from the institution of western patriarchy. All women are subject to male violence at some point in their lives. Like a resource to be controlled, Doyle argues that reproduction does not empower women but is a power that men seek. Doyle cites a lot of pop culture stuff that I found to be fascinating. The creators of the slasher film Scream had not idea teenage girls would be their biggest demographic. Why? Because all women live in fear of male violence and slasher films are total vicarious catharsis. Doyle dovetails this with the female audience of true crime genre.
Jurassic Park, I had no idea, is about men trying to control female reproduction and exploit it. All dinosaurs on the island are engineered to be female so that only the scientists can control reproduction. Yet, the dinosaurs become gender fluid, reproduce in the wild and wreak maternal havoc on the island. The movie is actually a huge metaphor for men trying to control women and maintain the patriarchy power hierarchy. Women actually do have power, and what happens when they seek to exercise it? They are painted as monsters.
Women are constantly blamed for male violence. The Green River killer killed 40+ women and got life where a sex worker who killed 7 men in self defense got 6 executive death sentences. Ed Gein, who wore women’s skin as clothing, was a serial killer whose psychopathy is blamed on his mother which started the great horror movie trend of blaming women for their monster children: Jason, Carrie, Buffalo Bill and many more. If women do not fit the peg of patriarchy they are easily portrayed as monsters.
Patriarchy is the current power structure, despite great gains. A woman can all too easily become a cultural cast away or monster when she wants to do whatever she wants with reproduction, gender, motherhood, sex or employment. The patriarchy constantly puts checks on female power either through legislation or cultural zeitgeist.
This book was amazing. Highly recommend.
Rating: really liked it
As someone who loves horror, has an interest in women's history, and has a darker sense of humour, I fell in love with this book before I was even finished reading its introduction.
The book covers everything from odd true crime cases (and often how they go on to influence pop culture), The Exorcist and several other horror gems (like Dracula, The Craft, Carrie, and even Godzilla and Twin Peaks), witchcraft, menstruation, motherhood, female sexuality, etc. It's super informative - though not without some hyperbole that I chalk up to Sady Doyle being super fucking hype for this stuff - and it's written in a way that is both humourous and empowering, all while being genuinely thought-provoking.
I could spend the entire afternoon gushing over and describing this book in depth or attempting to analyze the topics it examines, but I'm not going to, because I think, simply, it speaks for itself. I love anything relating to what Doyle refers to as 'female monstrosity', and if those words speak/mean anything to you at all as well, or catch your attention for whatever reason, this is definitely a book you should read.
Rating: really liked it
If you feel like women are reaching a boiling point; if you question why we think about daughters, mothers, and wives the way we do; if you've always wondered where it all came from and where it might be heading..... read this book.
In her compulsively readable, feminist manifesto, Sady Doyle takes a sharp look at mythology, pop culture, and real women through a lens to see how patriarchy was, is, and always has been how we see women.
Completely fascinating (the couple pages of Jurassic Park alone have me rethinking some things) I loved how she took familiar movies and mythologies and tied them to real women and situations. It really is a book to dive back into again and again when you're tired of the bull**** and need to remember why the patriarchy sucks and how we can see it for what it really is.
Ending with a call to action, and a look at the most recent presidential election, I found myself feeling hopeful for the first time in a while... even though I know that will come crashing down the next time I read the news.
Rating: really liked it
Women are monsters, according to the patriarchy. That’s the thesis of
Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power, Sady Doyle’s follow-up to their 2016
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why . To elaborate a bit more, Doyle argues that the portrayal of women (and femininity) in our media and culture overlaps with our understanding of the monstrous, the Other, the unnatural or unholy, and in this way patriarchal structures encourage people of all genders to view “male” as normal and default and “female” as deviant. It’s one of those theses that seems obvious once you sit and think about it, if you’re of a feminist bent like myself, but what makes this book special is the consummate skill Doyle brings to synthesizing all these various real life and fictional portrayals of women-as-the-monster. The research and thought on display here is impressive.
Doyle divides the book into three parts: daughters, wives, and mothers. Each part has two or three chapters devoted to social structures or cultural constructs (puberty, virginity, seduction, marriage, birth, family, and bad mothers, respectively) that Doyle then analyzes through a feminist lens and through the intertextuality of horror and true crime. They reference historical materials from the nineteenth century as well as fictional works like Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein; they reference modern movies and TV shows. Thus spanning several centuries of culture, the book seeks to establish that these phenomena are not limited to any one time or place. They are inherent in the fabric of any patriarchy, this need to oppress women (and influence the behaviour of men) by portraying them as monstrous.
Why only 3 stars? Honestly, the book doesn’t live up to what I was expecting to find. That’s not a criticism: this is a
good book. I just had a wildly inaccurate idea of what it would be in my head, something that didn’t involve such a detailed tour through the landscape of horror fiction—a genre that just isn’t something I tend to enjoy watching or thinking about. If you are a fan of horror and of horror criticism, you will like this book a lot more than I do, I hope; the subject matter that Doyle uses just doesn’t quite align with my interests, as interesting as their writing and ideas remain. I enjoyed this book and found it thought-provoking, but it doesn’t sing to me, much in the way that a book about math might teach someone else something but not stir the same type of love it will for me.
That was a long-winded way of saying “your mileage may vary,” I know!
But I needed to put that out there, because my other difficulty in this review is trying to decide what I’ve learned from this book versus what I already knew but just enjoyed hearing someone else say. By this I mean, everything in here basically makes sense to me. I’ve read other texts that examine the portrayal of women and women’s bodies as monstrous (Doyle cites
Ginger Snaps, which is 19 years old at this point, oh wow, and is a horror movie I actually did enjoy). Now,
Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers has a broader scope and deeper analysis than most of those texts, which tended either to be fiction or shorter articles. So I do think Doyle is making a valuable contribution to this field. It’s just tough for me to get excited about any of their particular ideas. One of the most significant feelings I have coming out of this book is a desire for some writing along these lines specifically about
Supernatural, a fantasy/horror show which I absolutely
adore but which I have to admit, when examined from a feminist lens, is problematic as all-get-out.
Here’s one specific piece of praise: Doyle articulates why TERFs are not actually feminists quite well. They point out that the long-held historical need to marginalize and demonize trans people (particularly trans women) serves the patriarchy’s agenda: “Though the hatred for trans and queer women is louder and more intense … it nevertheless stems from the same basic patriarchal need for control.” (This comes from a much longer section discussing trans people and their exclusion/othering.) Well said! TERFs claim that trans women are not, somehow, as “real” women as cis women are. Yet this need to control what defines a woman (and as the Virginia Woolf epigraph of this book explains, that is a nearly impossible task) stems itself from patriarchal ideas about sex and gender roles in our society, grounded firmly in the idea of male access and control over reproduction. (Editor’s note, Dec 2020: I have removed a sentence from this review that refers to Doyle as a cis woman while commenting on the book’s coverage of trans women. Doyle has since come out as non-binary.)
I think the best audience for this book would be people who have a bit more interest in horror or true crime stuff than I do. Don’t let this pronouncement dissuade you from reading this if you’re at all intrigued, mind you—but this is ultimately a book of feminist literary criticism grounded within an early 21st-century awareness of cultural commentary. It would make an excellent textbook for a university class analyzing the modern horror genre. And it is fit for general reading consumption too. It didn’t wow me quite as much as
Trainwreck or, indeed, some of the other feminist writing I’ve read recently. But that’s ok! It still left me with lots to think about, and that alone is an excellent thing for a book to do.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
Rating: really liked it
Sady Doyle has a real talent for I guess what could be call "gender studies" nonfiction - they pick an angle on how we perceive women across European & North American history and then weave together various cultural sources like folk tales, movies/TV, books, and news events to explore why we view women in that light. In this case, their lens is monster stories associated with women and how that ties to three major identities that we associate with womanhood (daughters, wives, & mothers). I think the thing that was missing from this for me was a more dedicated section on narratives of monstrousness towards women of color - they do this for trans women and does address obliquely Black and WOC in certain sections, but this seems like such an obvious section to include. Perhaps they didn't see a way to do it with the three part structure established? Either way, I wish it had been there, but besides that, this was a great integrative approach to this recurring trope in Western culture
Rating: really liked it
Holy shit this book was so good. Love horror? Love women? THEN HAVE I GOT A BOOK FOR YOU! Don’t? Then why are we even friends?
Rating: really liked it
Extremely interesting! Very much recommend to all women.
Kind of pop culture ish mixed with recent high profile cases of violence against women in fiction and reality. Reads like real life horror ...
Hard to say it was enjoyable, because it's the sad and scary reality, but Doyle delivers in snappy, fascinating tidbits that will add to your knowledge bank of environmental and situational awareness.
“Men fear women, even as they work to make women fear men, because, on the most basic level, male dominance is an illusion. For patriarchy to work, men have to control literally every facet of sex and family life—who has sex, with whom, and when and whether they get pregnant, who owns the child, and who care for it—and given the unruly nature of sex and birth, this control is perpetually slipping out of their grasp. Patriarchy is inherently unsustainable: It is not possible to control another human being at every moment of every day. It is not possible to control what (or who) women want. It is not possible to own a resource that is located inside someone else's body, which sex and reproduction always are. And if women realied how fragile male control is, everything might change.
So, by constructing this patriarchy, men make monsters: the twisted, slimy, devouring, mutating, massively powerful images of female desire and sexuality and motherhood that take place outside of patriarchy. Monsters are the children that aren't supposed to exist, the feral desires we've fought to repress and forget, the outsiders waiting at the edge of our social world to confront us, the primeval, female body, that gives and takes life without permission. Men's dread of this power has given rise to countless, bluntly anatomical nightmares: corrupting uteruses poisonous blood, women who have slimy, serpentine tails instead of vaginas, or snakelike, elastic jaws that swallow men whole, or 'castrated' women whose bodies are open wounds. A monster is a supposed-to-be-subjugated body that has become threatening and voracious– a woman who is, in the most basic sense, out of (men's) control.”
Rating: really liked it
As much as I loved Doyle's last book, this one was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I think her analysis of culture casting women as monstrous is both valid and important, but in condensing her examples, I feel that she sometimes leaves out crucial details that don't support her case. For instance, she contrasts Aileen Wuornos's six death sentences to Gary Ridgway's life imprisonment but fails to mention a) Ridgway has 48 life sentences plus 480 years and b) he was spared the death penalty in exchange for identifying unknown victims. While Wuornos's sentence was lamentable, I don't think it's fair to compare their circumstances.
Rating: really liked it
In Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power, Sady Doyle examines the influence of patriarchy on culture and media; describes how patriarchal norms fuel attitudes toward women and women’s roles; and illustrates the way in which acts of violence against real women are intertwined with popular cultural depictions of women, with each feeding off one another and reinforcing one another. Doyle divides her feminist exploration into three parts: patriarchal strictures on daughters, wives, and mothers.
Doyle provides a historical perspective going all the way back to Aristotle and his claim that women are deviant males. She traces the concept through the ages and includes Freud’s contribution that women are traumatized because they don’t have a penis. Doyle argues the patriarchal projection of women as monsters, deficient, and deviant ultimately stems from fear of the power of women and their capacity to reproduce. Labeling women as monsters represents the extreme and violent lengths patriarchy is willing to go to punish women for daring to disrupt or undermine patriarchal control.
The real-life crimes Doyle describes are of women murdered, persecuted, tortured, dismembered, and flayed. The examples horrify. Some women suffered from mental illness; some were driven to madness; and some were murdered simply because they were strong, independent women who refused to cower down to their husbands. Her analysis of horror movies depicting pubescent girls was particularly insightful. She argues the male lens portrays young girls transitioning to womanhood as something other than human, as demonic, possessed by the devil, ineffable, and spewing all manner of filth from every orifice of their bodies. Her analysis of The Exorcist analyzes scenes from the movie in terms of cultural revulsion at menstruation and a girl’s sexual awakening.
In spite of some of the deeply alarming content, Doyle avoids saturating her book with doom and gloom. She lightens the tone by injecting humor and sarcasm where appropriate and is not averse to poking fun at herself. Her research is impressive, as is her ability to synthesize the experiences of real-life women with fictional portrayals in movies and books depicting woman as monster. The scope of her analysis is wide, stretching all the way from Shelley’s Frankenstein to Jurassic Park. She concludes with a call to action for all women to celebrate and embrace the monster within. An extensive resource guide, notes, and index are included at the end of the book.
Although prone to the occasional hyperbole, the work is highly recommended for its contribution to feminist scholarship. It will appeal to those interested in understanding how popular culture serves to reflect and reinforce patriarchal norms which are designed to oppress women and restrict their choices.
My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com
Rating: really liked it
Solid Lilith Fare.
Doyle approaches the immense spread and pressure of patriarchy via popular media through the ages: myths to movies. This is an easy to grasp format that doesn't sacrifice while demonstrating how pervasive the concept of heterosexual male dominance has been and still is as given through the lens of storytelling from history--a narrative told by subsequent peoples--to mass hysteria, Salem witch trials, e.g., to horror film genre to literature and so on and so on . . .
Doyle's insights into Frankenstein were great, one of my favorite books. And I chuckled when Doyle discussed Oresteia trilogy because I was astounded by the subversion of the chthonic gods to the sky gods, aka submission of earth goddesses by the sky gods as seen in Athena's dialogue with the Furies in Eumenides. Athena sublimates them under her aegis. The real life horror stories outweigh the film versions, but it discusses the popularity of horror movies with young women.
Overall, recommended read.
My thanks to Becky, it was in her feed that I saw this book.
Rating: really liked it
Didn't really care for this. It wasn't what I expected.
There were some good quotes and I liked the idea, and the references to media.
The title says "female" but while some parts touch on being female, there's a lot of gender-essentialism. Gender is not only a social construct but a patriarchal tool, but here it is treated as though innate.
For the most part, a lot of the misogyny depicted here is the standard, traditional misogyny. There are some more recent methods of misogyny I thought would have tied in really well here but weren't mentioned.
A huge concern I had is that Doyle references Andrea Chu more than once, and Andrea Chu is extremely misogynist, and gender essentialist—a lot of her writing argues that biological sex determines your personality and that females are inherently submissive and "wanting to be filled." That is super gross and insulting. She also fetishizes woman/girlhood (the "touching at sleepovers" comment, hello?). Andrea Chu is not a viable source for anything but the use of gender politics to perpetuate misogyny. So I did not like that Doyle references them positively.
Again, some parts were decent. If Doyle hadn't been so gender essentialist it could have been better, and included the new liberal "woke" forms of misogyny (like what Andrea Chu perpetuates). But Doyle is a liberal feminist so she has to get those woke points.
I liked all the references to popular media and even went through the references to mark off some items I’d like to read or watch.
Favorite quotes from the book:
“Female monstrosity inspires terror because it really can end the world—or our current version of it, anyway. But our world is not the only one, or the best one, and in fact, the more time I spend with monsters, the more I think its destruction is overdue” (xxii)
“We would rather see girls stopped dead—stuck in a constant childhood that never decays—than let them grow into women who can pursue their desires” (30)
“But if the Final Girl is an exception to the female rule, she can’t be our avatar. Most of us, by definition, are not exceptional. It’s when we shift out focus to the margins, and all the non-Final, ordinary, disposable girls who are stripped and splayed and stabbed and ripped apart, that the next part of our story becomes clear” (34)
“Women are defined from the outside, in terms of how they seem to men, rather than from the inside, as thinking, feeling subjects. They are not fellow people, not even a different or worse variety of person, but simply the opposite of men, and hence, the opposite of human” (67)
“The ultimate violence patriarchy does to women is to make us believe we deserve what has been done to us—a loop forever closing, breaking us so that we will raise broken women” (216)
Rating: really liked it
I don't know how to rate this book because I adored some parts and others fell really flat.
I loved Doyle's exploration of the popularity of horror and true crime among women: it's a release valve, it gives us an "excuse to scream" at the horrors we endure just as a course of life. And the popularity of the serial killer "fandom" as a modern incarnation of the gothic hero. Love it. Also, I love Gone Girl, but was a little too young to realize that it was based on the Laci Peterson! My eternal gratitude to Sady Doyle for opening my eyes to that!
And most of the text about female monstrosity is really good. But in the section on puberty--I agree that girls in puberty realize that we are becoming monsters. But Doyle asserts that part of the fury we experience in puberty is the transition from being human--being children--to being woman, something that is by "nature" monstrous (at least according to Pliny and Aquinas and every classic male writer). But it is my experience and reading that girl children know we are treated as not-as-human as our brothers and male classmates. If not consciously, we at least get a sense of it. And I felt that more exploration of the masculine female as monstrous in public consciousness was glaringly absent. How we feminize masculine women in myth and history and fiction to de-monsterfy them, how we makeover young tomboys to make them acceptable little girls. But I know it's a limited scope, just one woman's book. I don't know. She seemed a bit squeamish to explore those of us whose monstrosity is located in how we don't align to heterosexual modes of beauty, family ties, gender, and sexuality.
Last thing: If the witch may liberate us, how exactly? I would propose that being a witch entails building robust networks of female support and communication unencumbered by cares of male judgment. Judge away. A rebirth of consciousness raising. And so on.
I need to stop reading feminist texts when my anxiety is already high. But I won't!
Rating: really liked it
I adored Trainwreck, but was majorly disappointed with this piece of work. Despite the hype, it really struck me as a structure-less collection of pop culture references, which began to feel less developed the further into the book I read.
