“Anytime a woman documents the indignities of withstanding a misogynistic world, there are a dozen bench-warmers at the ready to charge her with wallowing, with perpetuating a cycle or psychology of victimhood, with the cynical glamorization of her own suffering. In short, of making a scene. Of being pathetic. Haven‘t we gone far enough? Why can‘t we just shut the fuck up? It‘s all more silencing.”
so-soOh boy. It ends in a "meh" despite the subject being extremely interesting, mostly b/c the intro and chapter 1 weren't quite on topic; Frantzen is in literature, not history, so for him the narrative is important enough to spend a chapter on 19th c opera. That said, the bits about Anglo-Saxon England and how later texts reflected it? Awesome.
Photo from Friday; today was so rainy I had to finish the book at the gym after the coffee shop closed.
"unlike me, an intellectual, those stupid basic Kushner fans don't notice the true depth of Angels."
Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but nothing in Frantzen's style of writing so far, 95% through the book, leads me to any other way of interpreting that quote.
Why why why was a typeface where the eth, the wynn, and the thorn are all so ugly and mismatched chosen for a book full of quotes in Old English?
“For years the myth of Philomela hung over me. The tongue stump. That soundless scream. A formal revolution in testimonial utterance. At the time I first encountered Heroines I was meant to be writing a dissertation on confessional poetry and women‘s projects of self-making, mainly Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two ‘poetesses‘ you should never admire publicly if you wish to be taken seriously. (In any case I wasn‘t. Taken seriously that is.) -
so-soA choose your own adventure book for learning about gender identity, sexuality, & the differences between biological sex & gender identity.
Fairly basic, sometimes reductive & repetitive, & occasionally plays up stereotypes. But is also a fun starting point for anybody‘s journey into learning more about gender identity, while also briefly touching on the intersections of race, class, & disability & the difficulties facing those groups.🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
I love how Frantzen goes from "Foucault missed a lot in The History of Sexuality when it comes to the medieval era" (true) to "so all of queer theory is stupid and invalid and also they probably said something mean to me". I don't even care. I usually like academic pettiness, but this has been going on for 21 pages! I'm not out of the fucking intro yet. Do your own work instead of bitching at everyone else. Jesus fuck.
It's probably not a good sign when I'm irritated with the author before even leaving the introduction.
More soon.
The trans rights annual readathon is almost here!
March 21-31
I will be reading:
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi
Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg
