#fem lit

[rubyraine]

thinking about the time when this guy asked if i had any feminist literature recs and i genuinely gave him like 5 before i realized he was insulting me…

[afuriouspipedream]

I just got finished reading “The Power”

and my mind is completely blown. I don't know if I'll ever look at society or "gender roles" the same way ever again.

I wouldn't call it "feminist lit" at all. It's about the fact that humanity is easily corruptible, and how easily power corrupts. It's about how easy it is to use evolutionary psychology to back up any fool ideas we come up with, how easy it is to skew history to fit our beliefs and value systems. This is not a fantasy about a society ruled by women: this is a cautionary tale that flies in the face of the mistaken idea that if the power structure were suddenly reversed, things would somehow be better.

It's infuriating and thought-provoking, maddening and honest. It's one of those books you end up reading several times to take it all in. It honestly makes me think about what it means to be a woman, and if it "means" anything at all.

[pinkhutia]

This regulation of duty by the mere circumstance of sex, rather than by the fundamental principle of moral being, has led to all that multifarious train of evils flowing out of the anti-christian doctrine of masculine and feminine virtues. By this doctrine, man has been converted into the warrior, and clothed in sternness, and those other kindred qualities, which, in the eyes of many, belong to his character as a man; whilst woman has been taught to lean upon an arm of flesh, to sit as a soul arrayed "in gold and pearls, and costly array," to be admired for her personal charms, and caressed and humored like a spoiled child, or converted into a mere drudge to suit the convenience of her lord and master. This principle has spread desolation over the whole moral world, and brought into all the diversified relations of life, "confusion and every evil work." It has given to man a charter for the exercise of tyranny and selfishness, pride and arrogance, lust and brutal violence. It has robbed woman of essential rights, the right to think and speak and act on all great moral questions, just as men think and speak and act; the right to share their responsibilities, dangers, and toils; the right to fulfill the great end of her being, as a help meet for man, as a moral, intellectual and immortal creature, and of glorifying God in her body and her spirit which are His. Hitherto, instead of being a help meet to man, in the highest, noblest sense of the term, as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has been a mere appendage of his being, and instrument of his convenience and pleasure, the pretty toy, with which he wiled away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission. Woman, instead of being regarded as the equal of man, has uniformly been looked down upon as his inferior, a mere gift to fill up the measure of his happiness. In the poetry of "romantic gallantry," it is true, she has been called the "last best gift of God to man;" but I believe I speak forth the words of truth and soberness when I affirm, that woman never was given to man.

Angelina Grimké, 1837

[pinkhutia]

…we feel it our imperative duty to stand by each other through weal and woe; to administer to each others wants, to prevent each other from back-sliding—to comfort each other in sickness, and advise each other in health, to incite each other to the love and attainment of those excellences, which can alone constitute the perfection of the female character.

The Constitution of the Lowell Factory Girls Association, 26 September 1836

[enlightenedlady]

I had to pitch a video game concept based on media that already exists for a school project. I decided to do mine on The Power by Naomi Alderman and now I can’t stop thinking about how cool this game would be.

[ghostexpressions]

“Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single pin in one’s hair![...] Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard”

-“The Mark on the Wall” by Virginia Woolf

[softbrutalist]

if there is an end then it’s too dark to see, if there is an end then it’s too bright to see, hands folding, unfolding

Scheherezade, Lucy Wainger (x), courtesy of my poetic darling @hyperides

[aeroposter]

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