Okay everyone… between weddings, break-ups, school, apartment hunting, family problems, etc., your lovely administrators of this here book club haven’t been able to give it the love and attention it deserves. So while we go ahead and sort our lives out, we’re going to go ahead and take a break for the next few months.
We’ll jump-start the book club in a bit and it’ll be bigger and better than ever! Well, maybe not bigger, but certainly better. Okay, maybe just so-so. Whatever, point is, we’ll be back.
In the meantime, feel free to carry on discussions about feminist reads!
Filed under: General | Leave a Comment
June/July Book Announcement
Voting has closed for the next book club pick, and the winner is: The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come… (from Goodreads)
Discussion will start in June and continue through August. Pick up those books and stay tuned for the discussion.
Filed under: title announcement | Leave a Comment
- Cover of The Blind Assassin
I loved The Blind Assassin. I saw that Radical Readers and Feminisms For Dummies was reading it this month, and I thought to myself: That title sounds really familiar… I went to look at the bookshelves in my closet and, lo and behold, there it was among my mom’s books! Just waiting to be read! So I grabbed it and started immediately, and I couldn’t put it down. This book is truly epic, and the way Margaret Atwood weaves multiple stories together, revealing just enough information at a time to keep the pages turning, is absolutely masterful.
I could gush about the book for hours, and probably not even make a dent in the brilliance of this novel, but instead, I’ve decided to add to the discussion of the book by doing a Pentadic analysis of the marriage and subsequent love and sexual violence which ensued between the main characters.
(WARNING! There are spoilers in this post, so don’t read it if you haven’t finished! I’ve put the rest of this post after the jump to avoid angry readers!)
Continue reading ‘A Pentadic Analysis of The Blind Assassin’
Filed under: book discussion | 1 Comment
Tags: blind assassin, class divide, depression, kenneth burke, margaret atwood, pentadic criticism, rhetoric, sexual violence, violence
The Blind Assassin
I got a little ahead of myself and finished this selection early (love, love, LOVE Margaret Atwood – we could do an entire book club just around her!). Here are some things I think are worth keeping in mind as you read…
How is education (in both the most literal and broadest senses) passed on between characters? Who is teaching, and what is being learned?
What is the relationship between violence and silence? How do each manifest throughout the novel?
Posted by: Amanda of The Undomestic Goddess
Filed under: book discussion | 1 Comment
Tags: blind assassin
The Rape Culture Around Us
The book selection for February and March is Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. As a way to start the discussion – especially for those who are still waiting for their copies or haven’t had a chance to start – I thought it’d be good to talk about some of the ways you see rape culture around you. Feel free to not only give examples but to link to a post you read or wrote that was particularly spot-on.
Filed under: General | Leave a Comment
Tags: Yes Means Yes
Book Announcement and a Question
Voting has closed for the next book club pick. Winning by the tiniest margin possible (1 vote), the next pick is Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti.
Yes Means Yes will bring to the table a dazzling variety of perspectives and experiences focused on the theory that educating all people to value female sexuality and pleasure leads to viewing women differently, and ending rape. Yes Means Yes aims to have radical and far-reaching effects: from teaching men to treat women as collaborators and not conquests, encouraging men and women that women can enjoy sex instead of being shamed for it, and ultimately, that our children can inherit a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished. With commentary on public sex education, pornography, mass media, Yes Means Yes is a powerful and revolutionary anthology. (from Goodreads)
Discussion will start in February and continue through March.
Now, on to a question that I’d like folks to ponder. Because the vote was so close between Yes Means Yes and the runner-up, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, would you all like to skip the voting for April & May and read this book then? Discuss in the comments so we can figure out what to do.
Filed under: title announcement | 12 Comments
The Ethical Slut*: Some Thoughts
*I have only read the first edition of the book (my library doesn’t have the latest one), so these comments stem from that reading. If there are issues raised below that are solved in the updated edition, please let me know in the comments!
1) Do you think this book explains consent in a way that is useful, or does it take for granted an understanding of the term? In first reading, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to an essay found in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. I almost would recommend reading Yes Means Yes as a pre-req in order to fully understand sexuality and its power and influence in our culture before exploring more nontraditional relationships where consent and consideration of others’ feelings is not only important but necessary. After this is understood, the book serves as a very practical 101 for those considering polyamorous/nonmonogamous relationships.
2) Did reading this book make you consider trying nonmonogamous relationships yourself? Or if you’re already in one, did you learn anything new or look at your relationship in a different way? Shortly after reading the book, I was speaking to a friend about a relationship I had in college that fit this mold. “Oh, everyone is polyamorous in college,” she mused. And yet, the relationship in question followed closely to the model of this more responsible, adult relationship. We had our main relationship, and we cared about each other very much, but allowed ourselves to see other people, whether we took advantage of this or not. If one of us did hook up with someone else, we told the other person, and we were able to function without any jealousy. In fact, in some instances we encouraged the other relationships and hoped the best for each other. This was a safe way for us to explore different relationships with different types of people with different levels of sexuality while maintaining the caring bond we had for each other. It certainly helped that we were at an age where this type of behavior is encouraged, and where we didn’t have any shared life responsibilities, such as a marriage, kids, mortgage, etc.
3) Okay, I have to add…Did anyone think of this?
Posted by Amanda of The Undomestic Goddess.
Filed under: book discussion | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ethical Slut
Open Thread on Openness
While folks are waiting to get started on The Ethical Slut, I figured I’d take a cue from one of our members on Goodreads and start a general discussion about open relationships.
Please note: If you need to comment under a pseudonym, I completely understand, but please do not use that as an invitation to shame or disrespect anyone.
For those of you who are currently in or interested in trying nonmonogamous relationships, please feel free to share your experience. What led you to that path, what are the advantages and disadvantages you see in your style, what are the common reactions you receive, and so forth?
For those of you who aren’t in an open relationship, please share what you hope to get out of this book. What are the preconceptions you have, what images have you seen (in the media, amongst your peers, etc.), and so forth?
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
Filed under: General | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ethical Slut, poly
I got my hands on this book in the nick of time (does anyone else in this group borrow from the Queens library?). While it was published in 1984, there are still many points that are relevant to what’s happening today.
The first part of the book delves into how the second wave of feminism in the 1960s excluded important groups of women, focusing solely on white, upper-class heterosexual cis women. Today too, feminists are infighting to make sure disabled women, lesbian women, and trans women, among others, are included in the national discourse. Just as bell hooks stated to her readers that society has to unlearn racism and classism (as it is still very much doing) so too will they have to unlearn the stereotypes that befall these other groups. And while some of us may become frustrated by the infighting (how can we ever move forward as a movement if we’re bickering with each other?), bell hooks has this to offer: “If women always seek to avoid confrontation…we may never experience any revolutionary change” (66-7). So these discrepancies are actually healthy in order for us to grow internally as a movement and proceed with a unified voice.
The second issue that remains pertinent to today (in fact, more pertinent to Wednesday – the National Lobby Day and Rally Against Stupak) is about revolutionizing parenting. Though much of bell hooks’ argument has to do with transforming fatherhood to be just as important and revered in our culture as motherhood, she does say that we need “to make motherhood neither a compulsory experience for women nor an exploitative or oppressive one” (137). This of course upholds the thinking behind Roe v Wade, but also lends to the idea of shaming single mothers, or simply hating on the mommy culture in today’s mostly white, urban upper-class circles.
Filed under: book discussion | Leave a Comment
Tags: bell hooks
This is a guest post by Madama Ambi, who originally posted this at the Feminist Advisory Board for Obama blog.
I belong to a feminist book club and we’re reading Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks. This was written in 1984 and is considered a classic feminist text. Last night I read the final chapter on Feminist Revolution.
Although I think I read this book 20 years ago as part of my curriculum in feminist psychotherapy, this books feels fresh and relevant to me. I jumped into her last chapter on Feminist Revolution because I’ve felt very frustrated by where women’s movement is these days. I’ve been saying that we have developed into fiefdoms of feminisms, where women are now busy running their own non-profits, holding conferences, writing books, appearing on TV, etc. This is all good, but it ain’t revolution and it isn’t going to change the power structure. OK, this is what I’ve been saying before jumping into bell hooks’ chapter on Feminist Revolution. These are the conclusions I’ve come to as a result of living online and spending every day roaming the femisphere to find out what people are doing, who they are, what their thoughts are about women’s movement now.
Then I land in language that so speaks to me it is like water to my thirsty throat. Here is the paragraph that sums up, for me, what is missing in feminist/womanist movement:
“Feminist consciousness-raising has not significantly pushed women in the direction of revolutionary politics. For the most part, it has not helped women understand capitalism–how it works as a system that exploits female labor and its interconnections with sexist oppression. It has not urged women to learn about different political systems like socialism or encouraged women to invent and envision new political systems. It has not attacked materialism and our society’s addiction to overconsumption. It has not shown women how we benefit from the exploitation and oppression of women and men globally or shown us ways to oppose imperialism. Most importantly, it has not continually confronted women with the understanding that feminist movement to end sexist oppression can be successful only if we are committed to revolution, to the establishment of a new social order.”
That’s what I’m working on! It sounds daunting, almost grandiose, to say that feminists/womanists should take this on, and yet that’s where my evolving analysis has led me.
And here’s another idea from bell hooks that I had to highlight in yellow:
“Women must begin the work of feminist reorganization with the understanding that we have all (irrespective of our race, sex, or class) acted in complicity with the existing oppressive system. We all need to make a conscious break with the system.”
Pretty mindblowing statements…and I think I know what she’s talking about…in fact, I think I’m starting to organize around these ideas.
Filed under: book discussion | Leave a Comment
Tags: bell hooks, feminism
Radical Readers & Feminisms for Dummies 