"Nothing in our background has prepared us for this role."

[jennygadget]

I'm only to page nine of How to Suppress Women's Writing and I am already struck both by how lucky I am and how pervasive this shit still is.

It's important to note what has changed - more opportunities, more rights, and sometimes even a glimmer of understanding that housework is to be shared - because it's necessary in combating the aura of

Comments

[hawkwing_lb]

I found that reading Russ caused me - forced me - to look more clearly at the assumptions inherent in our existence. Women vs. society vs. ...well, everything.

This shit is everywhere. And even when I thought Russ was wrong (for me), you know what? She's right (for her).

[jennygadget]

Regarding her being "right (for her)," one of the things I am noticing already is how clear it is that she is identifying patterns, not making concrete statements about the overall state of the world.

So it's harder to try and brush stuff off with "that hasn't happened to me" because pervasive does not mean universal. And the patterns she's identifying (from what little I have read) are so pervasive and obvious, once they are pointed out, that even when it hasn't happened to me, I can name several people I know personally that have had to deal with it.

[hawkwing_lb]

Yes.

[aamcnamara]

Yeah. Reading The Female Man, more of it seemed to have changed since Russ's time than stayed the same; reading How To Suppress Women's Writing, more seemed to have stayed the same than changed.

[jennygadget]

That seems to be the consensus. (which is making me curious to read The Female Man after I am done with her non-fiction.)

How much of it, do you think, is things being different (or not) versus How To Suppress Women's Writing being non-fiction, while The Female Man is fiction? (and, I'm, guessing, more prone to hyperbole?)

[aamcnamara]

I don't think that's quite it, or at least all it. The Female Man seems more a product of/about its particular time period and the attitudes of second-wave feminism, whereas How To Suppress Women's Writing looks at larger patterns--that's the best way I can distinguish them.