Books; lots of books
I've finished the eighth Anita Blake book, Blue Moon, so I've finished all the ones that draicana had. I'm hoping she'll buy the other three (?) at some point, because if I were to buy them, I'd then need to go back and get the whole series out of a sense of anal-retentiveness completion.
I'm now reading Female Chauvinist Pigs, which I bought on Friday. It's a striking book, hot pink with black writing on the cover. I read the first 30-odd pages last night, and although I've never touched this book before, it feels like I've already read it, through other people's eyes. So far, nothing new, but very interesting nonetheless. I hope that Ms Levy will invest the women in her book with some agency - because I believe that some aspects of raunch culture are actually liberating. I guess this very concept, "liberating", is a bit of a double-edged sword, though. Perhaps for every person that feels liberated, another one feels forced to do something uncharacteristic and uncomfortable. Anyway, need to read more.
I also need to re-familiarise myself with Deleuze & Guattari's exact argument of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, as I find it comes up a lot of the time - it's a useful framework for thinking of cultural phenomena, but I want to go back to observing the intricacies of their theory.
I'm trying to put together a list of seminal (but more recent) feminist or women-centred social theory/social phenomena books/authors to eventually read and possibly own.
These are books/authors I know about:
* Cunt - Inga Musico (to get; not particularly trans-inclusive though)
* Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium - Donna Haraway (also one of my thesis books)
* bell hooks (need to decide what to read first)
* The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (read and owned; frightening book; not particularly anti-racist)
* The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (I read this a couple of years ago; it made me feel claustrophobic - it's a must-read, especially in the current climate of draconian control of female contraception/plan B/abortion)
* Female Chauvinist Pigs - Ariel Levy (reading this now)
* The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler (I've never seen a performance of this!)
* The Beauty Myth - Naomi Wolf (to get)
* The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
* The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer
* Gender Trouble - Judith Butler (I've read bits of this for various Cultural Studies subjects, but I'd like to read it for myself at some point)
I'm undecided about earlier feminist books, or books on earlier waves of feminism, such as The Female Eunuch. I'm more interested in sex-positive, anti-racist feminist texts. But at the same time I recognise that a lot of positive ideas and struggles went into these books, making them important, if not always fair and occasionally blind to privilege (other than male privilege, that is).
These are texts I've heard about, or were recommended to me, but I don't know much about them:
* Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future - Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner (mixed reviews of this one)
* Backlash - Susan Faludi
* This Bridge Called My Back - Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua eds. (Gloria Anzaldua is awesome!)
* Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion - Gloria Steinem
* Methodology of the Oppressed - Chela Sandoval
* White Women Race Matters - Ruth Frankenberg
* Colonize This - Daisy Hernandez, Bushra Rehman eds.
* Women Have Always Worked - Alice Kessler-Harris
Opinions? Suggestions?
I'd also really like a subscription to Bitch or Bust, but I'm undecided between the two. While plenty of people say both are awesome, some people say that Bust has become quite light and fluffy and mainly deals with pop culture without critically addressing any underlying issues (some have gone as far as to described it as "Alterna-Cleo"), while Bitch is the more academically-oriented of the two. Not having read these magazines before, I don't know what to think. It doesn't help that I can't find any copies in the usual places (Kino, Borders).
And while I'm on the subject, here are some awesome, easy-to-understand links that everyone should read, but especially people to whom privilege, feminism and cultural appropriation are fairly new topics of conversation:
How to be a nice guy - Introduction to privilege and how to be a nice person in general, keeping privilege in mind.
Taking Steps - Shoutout to Edward Said - Very good opinion piece on cultural appropriation.
But Don't You Like to Be Objectified Sometimes? - Good post, concerning the difference between objectification and attraction.
Yes, You Are - Inclusive feminism, yay! Feminism is for everyone.
I'm now reading Female Chauvinist Pigs, which I bought on Friday. It's a striking book, hot pink with black writing on the cover. I read the first 30-odd pages last night, and although I've never touched this book before, it feels like I've already read it, through other people's eyes. So far, nothing new, but very interesting nonetheless. I hope that Ms Levy will invest the women in her book with some agency - because I believe that some aspects of raunch culture are actually liberating. I guess this very concept, "liberating", is a bit of a double-edged sword, though. Perhaps for every person that feels liberated, another one feels forced to do something uncharacteristic and uncomfortable. Anyway, need to read more.
I also need to re-familiarise myself with Deleuze & Guattari's exact argument of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, as I find it comes up a lot of the time - it's a useful framework for thinking of cultural phenomena, but I want to go back to observing the intricacies of their theory.
I'm trying to put together a list of seminal (but more recent) feminist or women-centred social theory/social phenomena books/authors to eventually read and possibly own.
These are books/authors I know about:
* Cunt - Inga Musico (to get; not particularly trans-inclusive though)
* Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium - Donna Haraway (also one of my thesis books)
* bell hooks (need to decide what to read first)
* The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (read and owned; frightening book; not particularly anti-racist)
* The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (I read this a couple of years ago; it made me feel claustrophobic - it's a must-read, especially in the current climate of draconian control of female contraception/plan B/abortion)
* Female Chauvinist Pigs - Ariel Levy (reading this now)
* The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler (I've never seen a performance of this!)
* The Beauty Myth - Naomi Wolf (to get)
* The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
* The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer
* Gender Trouble - Judith Butler (I've read bits of this for various Cultural Studies subjects, but I'd like to read it for myself at some point)
I'm undecided about earlier feminist books, or books on earlier waves of feminism, such as The Female Eunuch. I'm more interested in sex-positive, anti-racist feminist texts. But at the same time I recognise that a lot of positive ideas and struggles went into these books, making them important, if not always fair and occasionally blind to privilege (other than male privilege, that is).
These are texts I've heard about, or were recommended to me, but I don't know much about them:
* Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future - Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner (mixed reviews of this one)
* Backlash - Susan Faludi
* This Bridge Called My Back - Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua eds. (Gloria Anzaldua is awesome!)
* Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion - Gloria Steinem
* Methodology of the Oppressed - Chela Sandoval
* White Women Race Matters - Ruth Frankenberg
* Colonize This - Daisy Hernandez, Bushra Rehman eds.
* Women Have Always Worked - Alice Kessler-Harris
Opinions? Suggestions?
I'd also really like a subscription to Bitch or Bust, but I'm undecided between the two. While plenty of people say both are awesome, some people say that Bust has become quite light and fluffy and mainly deals with pop culture without critically addressing any underlying issues (some have gone as far as to described it as "Alterna-Cleo"), while Bitch is the more academically-oriented of the two. Not having read these magazines before, I don't know what to think. It doesn't help that I can't find any copies in the usual places (Kino, Borders).
And while I'm on the subject, here are some awesome, easy-to-understand links that everyone should read, but especially people to whom privilege, feminism and cultural appropriation are fairly new topics of conversation:
How to be a nice guy - Introduction to privilege and how to be a nice person in general, keeping privilege in mind.
Taking Steps - Shoutout to Edward Said - Very good opinion piece on cultural appropriation.
But Don't You Like to Be Objectified Sometimes? - Good post, concerning the difference between objectification and attraction.
Yes, You Are - Inclusive feminism, yay! Feminism is for everyone.