Training so I can convince all the tourists that I, too, am a magical bookstore owner and they are trapped in the town from the book they are reading.Training so I can convince all the tourists that I, too, am a magical bookstore owner and they are trapped in the town from the book they are reading. Which, if it's Emily Henry's Beach Read, would actually be true!...more
Super excited for this because 1. I’ve loved all of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s graphic novels and learn a lot from them. 2. Dave Schaafsma 5 starred it in hiSuper excited for this because 1. I’ve loved all of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s graphic novels and learn a lot from them. 2. Dave Schaafsma 5 starred it in his review and he is the gold standard of graphic novel recs. 3. My band in college was named The Naked Trees after something I said while stoned so I’m sure I’m bound by library ethics laws to read it. Flashback to then:
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I love that Murakami often makes the act of writing sound like the worlds he creates: this reality-adjacent realm where anything is possible that you I love that Murakami often makes the act of writing sound like the worlds he creates: this reality-adjacent realm where anything is possible that you can seamlessly step in and out of with lessons learned on either side of the veil....more
Update 10/6/22 continued reading, will write a comprehensive review from these notes upon completion Getting near the end, and I am enjoying to see heUpdate 10/6/22 continued reading, will write a comprehensive review from these notes upon completion Getting near the end, and I am enjoying to see her arguments starting to come to a head. I've been thinking about Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own a lot in these past few chapters as much of Beauvoir's goal is to show how the counter to objectification and subjugation will be found in attaining equal footing in work and financial mobility, basically being able to have space for one's own. A lot of criticisms I've read on second-wave feminism by those who came after make a lot more sense reading these chapters, as there isn't much attention to the idea that there are many intersections of identity (race, sexual orientation, etc) that provide further barriers to equality in work/economic opportunity and there is a lot to be said that this aim just makes one complicit in a system that profits from oppression instead of full liberation for all. So there is that to consider.
'all human existence is transcendence and immanence at the same time'
Anyways, the next few chapters look at social roles of women, particularly as a mother or married woman, and Beauvoir argues how the roles and institutions themselves are constricting in and of themselves. Marriage, for instance, is so socially couched in ideas of being the property of a husband and subservient to care for the household that she calls it being cut off mid-life from the mainstream of life. In society, she says men are seen as the producers and wives are seen as accessories and therefor the role itself becomes demeaning. Similarly in the chapter on mothers, social roles have enforced that in motherhood the 'new existence is going to manifest itself and justify her existence,' as if a woman needs an external justification of her existence at all. Much of society is centered around treating women as if their life's worth hinges on this biological function and distributes shame if they do not 'fulfill' it, teaching her that she is merely the 'plaything of obscure forces' do remove any sense of self-agency. This gets into early conversations about contraceptives and fertility treatments, showing that political legislation over them is entirely for the purpose of bodily control and is another aspect of society that culminates in beating down women into feeling their own bodies are not theirs but the property of men.
Largely, these chapters argue that economic opportunity and accumulation of capital in equal footing with men would have a 'purifying role; it abolishes the war of the sexes.' While this feels admittedly short sighted, it is interesting to consider as a necessary step in order to even be at the table for further discussion on dismantling patriarchal oppression. She also argues that it is necessary to remove the knee-jerk response of men against any statements towards equality or rights for women in that so many arguments are dismissed before they are even heard, so gaining a voice at all is needed. More to come!
-------------- Update 9/23/22 continued reading, will update as I go and compile into a reworked review when finished. After the section on myths, which was a great analysis of literary works and how the Othering of women is embedded in cultural narratives and religious stories, de Beauvoir turns her attention to the lived experiences of women in society and how the social norms become oppressive emotionally, psychologically and physically. There is a sharp analysis on how women are socialized from an early age to become passive, even as simple and early on as the nature of gendered toys. Studies have detected that toys 'for girls' tend to focus on ideas of domesticity, nurturing and physical beauty, whereas toys 'for boys' are more active and focus on physical activity, aggression and labor. If found reading this section I was often reminded of Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in which she points out ' baby girls are given less room and more rules and baby boys more room and fewer rules,' as well as that 'Many cultures and religions control women’s bodies in one way or another...the reason is not about women, but about men,' and that many ideas of 'respectibility 'reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men.'
There is also the aspect that girls are brought into household chores and caretaking responsibility earlier and to higher degrees of labor than boys and socialized into believing caretaking is part of their identity whereas boys enjoy the fruit of the unpaid and under appreciated labor. In Dr. Kate Manne's collection Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women has a chapter on men's entitlement to domestic labor from women, citing a study that showed '46% of fathers reported being coequal parents,' and of those 'only 32% of mothers concurred with their assessment.' Not only do a majority of fathers not view coequal parenting as part of their duty, but the ones who think they are often are not actually coequal, the message being that women's domestic labor is so engrained as normal in society as much of it becomes invisible. This sort of thing is what Simone is getting at: to be a woman is to be undervalued which further's the Othering.
'woman has a more authentic experience of herself.'
Most interesting here was de Beauvoir's rebuttal on Freud's idea of 'penis envy'. She points out that men are able to focus their sexual ideas into one body organ whereas for a woman their focus of sexuality is on their entire body, which shapes them into seeing themselves entirely as a sexual object that moves through the world. As they are taught at a young age that sex is something a woman should feel shame over (as well as a dirty idea), they are therefor taught to feel shame for their own bodies which becomes psychologically emphasized as they develop in puberty. She argues that man's 'anatomical destiny' is different from women's 'from the biological, social, and psychological points of view,' and sexual initiation is not only received but perceived differently based on gender roles. We have a man being congratulated for being sexually active whereas a woman is shamed, for example. She also points out that for every sexual act there is the fear of pregnancy: sex is understood entirely inside the body whereas for a man it is outside of themselves and something they can walk away from.
With regard to the idea that a woman is socialized into feeling shame for the body as a sexual object where men are not, it is interesting to see the double standards. First there is that women are shamed by society for sexual activity whereas society high-fives men, but with regard to the body society also looks at ideas of self-improvement of one’s body differently. Take gym culture for example. Men shaping their body into ideas of strength and attraction is coded in language as self-improvement and also used in a hierarchy of masculinity. If used for attracting a woman it is less about themselves and more “look at how much better I am compared to the bodies of other men,” and “winning” an attractive woman is centered on having her as an accessory, an object to display like a trophy of ego they can show off to friends as a mark of pride. Interestingly enough it is often with aims for the male gaze (Shoutout to my friend Hope for having an amazing discussion about this with me, their ideas are represented in these paragraphs as we dug into the theories).
It is something they are given space to feel pride in, whereas a woman’s focus on the body is seen as being full of oneself. And much of gym culture involves what Beauvoir notes is socialized as feminine gender roles, from positioning the whole body as a sexual object to shaving legs, framing clothing that emphasizes the sexual attraction etc. The language around it in marketing products for men is that it is for strength, self-improvement and confidence but for women products are sold as “beauty products”. For men it is socialized as a positive and ego-boosting, for women it is seen as something they should improve and “fix” about their image: the dichotomy of self-improvement between increasing confidence (for men) versus reducing shame (for women).
The chapter on lesbian activity is quite unfortunate and rather outdated. de Beauvoir makes assumptions that being a lesbian is a choice, one made out of social context instead of 'sexual destiny', which is a bad take that assumes one can simply decide to not be queer. She views heterosexuality and homosexuality as equal, though claims that a woman chooses to become a lesbian out of resentment for the limitations of femininity. Ugh, this chapter is a bit frustrating and was critqued often later on.
More to come as I keep on, next chapter is on Mothers and should be interesting in light of what she wrote about mothers in Inseparable.
----------- Endeavouring through Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal work, The Second Sex, with my bookclub and I’ve decided to review it piece by piece as a place to organize my thoughts and discuss with goodreads friends as we page through the book. This work, with famous lines such as ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,’ became a cornerstone for feminism when it appeared in 1949, a groundbreaking treatise that would spark second-wave feminism and become a major work of 21st century philosophy. What stands out most notably so far is how much this is an extremely intelligent mind at work and how much the framing of the writing is important to its message, with book one covering a lot of territory and establishing a framework for her to make arguments within from a place where reactionary rebuttals have already been preempted and nullified. It’s important, I feel, to consider the context of when this was written and I’m attempting to approach it on its terms, though I am interested in reading more modern feminist critiques on the work (particularly with regard to race and queer identities) because nothing fascinates me more than seeing ideas reshaped and building upon each other across time. On that note, this is an important work in terms of academic canonization as, with academia, much work is building upon what came before and women have been largely underrepresented through history. I am enjoying this so far and will be reshaping this review as I progress.
I am reading the unabridged version translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. Interestingly, The Second Sex was very quickly translated into English upon its initial publication, arriving in English just three years later in 1952. The translation was notably poor, with many deletions and mistranslations of key terms, as well as breaking the text up into smaller paragraphs thought to suit a more American reader style. Personally I like seeing it as being confronted by a big wall of text, adding to the overall impression that this is a towering and powerful work that would not be silenced and demanded to be listened to. It is also interesting to consider that the first translation was by zoologist Howard M. Parshley, and that a man was reframing De Beauvoir’s arguments on gender into English might raise an eyebrow or two.
Book I
‘Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.’
The main argument in The Second Sex is that men fundementally oppress women by relegating them to the status of “Other” and defining them in opposition to men. Men, she argues, seek to transcend themselves (‘its project is not stagnation: it seeks to surpass itself’) and consider themselves to be the center of Self, with women an outside player. ‘The world has always belonged to males,’ she states, ‘and none of the reasons given for this have ever seemed sufficient.’ In order to define how this came to be, De Beauvoir looks at biology, psychoanalysis and historical materialism to establish a framework to understand how women came to be Othered and how the ‘eternal feminine’ has been reinforced by constructs. A major function of the opening few chapters is to impress upon the reader that much of social norms and operations are constructs and detangling how they came to be helps to understand how oppression and ‘Othering’ of women is for the purpose of dominance over them and not any factual reality.
‘What is a woman’ De Beauvoir asks in the introduction and reminds us that binaries of man/woman only exist as a linguistic construct. She argues that man considers themselves the Subject and women as a reproductive body. In the first chapter, De Beauvoir asks ‘what does the female represent in the animal kingdom? And what unique kind of female is realized in woman?’ and examines how a woman’s ‘body is not enough to define her…biology alone cannot provide an answer to the question….why is woman the Other?’ She shows countless examples of how division into binary sexes is not universal. She also examines how menstruation and pregnancy is when a woman ‘feels most acutely that her body is an alienated opaque thing,’ something she argues is not present in any other mammal to the level of subjugation and alienation felt by human women. She argues it is social constructs aligning to make women feel their body is ‘something other than her.’
In the chapter on psychoanalysis, De Beauvoir refutes Freud’s notion that women consider themselves merely ‘damaged men’ and posits that his assumption of women is based entirely on ‘masculine destiny’ with women outside it. She rejects sexuality as the entire basis for personality. Similarly, in the chapter on historic materialism, she rejects the idea that oppression of women and them being “Othered” is entirely economical struggles, though her she does say it is one part of the reasoning.
De Beauvoir looks at the historical context of how this came to be. Examining social roles of women as opposed to men, arguing that men doing the warring and physical defense while women maintained daily life chores brought about an impression of women as something lesser and an object to protect instead of an equal. This was furthered, she says, when men began obtaining property, considering women as just another aspect of property. She argues that women such as sex workers are more free than married women, though acknowledges there is a trade-off of financial independence and security and social independence.
The aspects that have most grabbed me are the aspects on how storytelling reinforces constructs and systemic oppression. Myths become a way to deliver social values, as well as religion and De Beauvoir looks at how much religion has been used to enforce the binary and Othering of women (milage may vary based on religion, she shows). This is interesting to consider in modern context when we talk about who is being centered and what stories are being given space, much in the way Edward W. Said wrote about how storytelling can be an agent of colonialism. The reflections on religious stories being used to subjugate women (ie De Beauvoir discusses Genesis as placing woman as coming from man and also initiating eating of the forbidden fruit) have enforced a patriarchial church structure rampant with misogyny: think how witch hunts historically were violent reactions against behavior such as women owning property, not having children or any other activity that could be said to be 'immoral'.
More to come as I read on! If anyone has some great article, I would LOVE to read them and share with my book club!...more
When my copy of Chilean Poet arrived, I snapped a photo and texted it to Mike Puma’s (GR friends from years back will know) old number like I would haWhen my copy of Chilean Poet arrived, I snapped a photo and texted it to Mike Puma’s (GR friends from years back will know) old number like I would have done. We always raced each other to get and read books and Zambra was a favorite for both of us. Whoever has the phone number now texted back a bunch of question marks and I replied “you’re gonna have to deal with this.” I really miss my friend, but I’m glad Im going to be reading our author for him and haunting his old number on his behalf. Hopefully they pick up a copy of this too....more
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