Truth

My radical feminist starter pack

To Read:

Suggestions from the inbox:

MEGA PDF

More books here, here, here, and here

de Beauvoir: The Second Sex (1949) 

Brøgger: Deliver Us From Love (1973)

Burstow: Radical Feminist Therapy (1992) PDF

Collins: Black Feminist Thought (1990)

Criado-Perez: Invisible Women (2019)

Daly: Gyn/Ecology (1978)

Daly: Beyond God the Father (1973)

Dines: Pornland (2010)

Dworkin: Intercourse (1987)

Dworkin: Last Days at Hot Slit (2019)

Ekis Ekman: Being and Being Bought (2013)

Firestone: The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Friedan: The Feminine Mystique (1963)

hooks: ain’t i a woman (1981)

hooks: Feminist Theory (1984)

Jeffreys: Beauty and Misogyny (2005) PDF

Jeffreys: The Industrial Vagina (2000)

Lorde: Sister Outsider (1984)

MacKinnon: Are Women Human? (2006)

MacKinnon: Butterfly Politics (2017)

Miles: Who Cooked the Last Supper? (1988/2001)

Millett: Sexual Politics (1970)

Moraga: This Bridge Called My Back (1983)

Rich: Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980)

Russ: How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983) PDF

Saini: Inferior (2017)

Wolf: The Beauty Myth (1990)

Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

Please feel free to message me if you have anything to add! 

Completed:

Dworkin: Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)  

Dworkin: Right Wing Women (1983)

Solanas: SCUM Manifesto (1967) PDF

Stylist

The shocking trailer for HBO’s new docuseries lifts the lid on the beauty industry’s dirty secrets

Want to know what really goes into your beauty products?

“In one scene, a scientist reports finding traces of asbestos in samples of products, while other experts report a catalogue of shocking issues on the rise such as changes in brain development, birth defects, ovarian failure and infant mortality.

We also see Palmer meet with individuals who have exhibited severe reactions to certain beauty products and hear their emotional accounts of devastating medical issues such as hair loss, speech problems and infertility. The scale of the issue, one commentator gravely declares, is an “overlooked epidemic”.”

My gripe with Euphoria. Part 3:

The Mixed Melodies of Maddy

For some, Maddy's character may be hit or miss, for a multitude of reasons. My main reason was that I wasn't sure how to feel, at least on a larger scale.

Maddy Perez, played by Alexa Demie

Like some of the other female leads, we are meant to ogle her as a very sexual and "empowered" teenager. Her archetype is presented as the cheerleader to Nate's jock. Both are rude, tend to achieve what they want, and have their horrendously unstable relationship to wave around to others. There is something that Maddy lacks, however, and that is Nate's disregard for others. Maddy is shown to empathize, especially with her friends. I would almost say that she cares for them more than she does Nate, but that idea could be challenged. She is shown to be confident and straightforward, which are good qualities, until the writer's decide otherwise. The viewer is left wondering how much of these confidence is a facade after all, especially when coupled with Nate. It is interesting to see how Nate's demon dick impacts the girls he's with. When Maddy was with Nate, she had seemed to have a streak of violence and hostility with others. When this relationship broke off, it was as if she mellowed, taking on a laid-back persona similar to Lexi's. There is still much to critique about her character, both pre and post mellow. It helps to have some background for Maddy Perez. At a young age, she was subjected to the controversial industry that is pageantry. Her confidence and skill helped in her success, which was quickly tarnished when her mother removed her from this arena due to the prevalence of pedophiles. I feel like this was the opportunity to introduce something big for the show, possibly a critique on the sexualization of girls as young as 3 years old.....but no. That misshap was brushed aside in a manner of "it happens" as Maddy rushes toward other avenues. She comes to the conclusion that she would rather do "nothing", then switches to possibly doing something in order to attain the high value of the women who's nails her mother painted. This is all to avoid the trappings of being both impoverished and in a strained relationship like her parents.

When she meets Nate Jacobs, this is where more of her character gets called into question. We see her purposefully portray herself as the perfect girl to Nate Jacobs, who has an odd list of demands (likes girls hairless, slender, small noses, chokers, and other shallow things) that supposedly Maddy is able to meet. She even lies about having never had sex just to increase her appeal. She will then use this newfound sexual status with Nate to convince him into treating her like the rich women she aspired to be, having him buy her lavish presents. This rich woman status feels more like pr*stitution, to put it flatly. The show presents her using her body for currency as empowering and confident. She even analyzes p*rn so that she can carry on their "techniques". It is stated offhandedly, that she doesn’t derive pleasure from doing so. Her body is no longer hers. It is Nate's, which he feels free to use at his own discretion.

All this, and Maddy admits that she is afraid of him. She has reason to be, given his violent streak not only from the 1st season where he chokes her, but also in the 2nd where threatens her life, then claims it was all a joke. In spite of this, she says that she is still attracted to him, although it makes her "sick to her stomach". It's clear why, and I think teen dating violence is often overlooked in the media, or isn't given the nuance it deserves. The girl’s abusers are not framed as such. Instead, these are boys with a troubled past who need rehabilitation through her love and her love alone. Never mind the stalking, the yelling, or the inappropriate touching. He says he "loves her". Unfortunately, these girls feel like they love them back. It's saddening to see Maddy's usually confident nature fizzle under the gaze of Nate. She is willing to hide her bruises for him, wrongly accuse someone for him, and even beat her friend over him. I do not want to claim that her character isn't strong because she still loves her abuser. A lot of women unfortunately fall in love with those that hurt them. Perhaps it is the need to give back, even when a lot has already been snatched away from her. Nevertheless, the show sees Maddy as empowering because of this toxic love. She gets right back with Nate despite her weariness of him, and even some lingering hatred. Still, this hatred is not as aimed toward him as I would have liked.

Despite ending things in season 1, we jump to season 2 with Maddy making the claim that she would like to get back together with Nate, and the two soon resume this rugged relationship. This was with Maddy's knowledge of Nate's secret tapes, mind you. Tapes exhibiting graphic material of Nate's father and other men, mind you. But they get back together, with Nate's undiclosed relationship with Cassie almost floating in the background ready to burst in the season's finale. It soon does, however, and Nate and Cassie's lies are both exposed. Nate has lied and physically assaulted Maddy, but Maddy's aggression is turned to the lesser crimes of her former friend. Sympathy isn't a requirement for these characters, but I think the direction taken in having Maddy beat her friend at this revelation is one that I find typical. Regardless of his crimes, Nate is allowed to retain his humanity in not getting humiliated. Lexi's parody of him and his fellow jocks did not single Nate out the way the portrayal of Cassie did. Cassie's misguided attempt at finding attention winds up giving her a kick so far down that I hardly see her getting back up in one piece. Maddy hits Cassie with her shoes, leaving her bleeding and forced to stand her crumbling ground against a girl not much different from her.

Obviously, Nate is stronger and far more aggressive than Cassie could ever be, but why would Maddy result to violence? Is it because it is easier to beat down on another girl than to directly confront the boy who caused you the most harm? I do not mean to excuse Cassie's actions, as they were harmful to do to a friend. Also, I can't suggest that Maddy would have gone behind Cassie's back the way she did to her, but the result of this conflict landed in a direction that was telling, to say the least. Nate gets to eject his father from his life and resume in the next steps toward his "redemption". Meanwhile, Maddy and Cassie while likely not recover from this conflict, or they will find a difficult way of doing so. These girls that the show loved to deem powerful and strong in their sexualities were ultimately thwarted by exactly that: their sexuality. They did not learn anything outside of not being able to trust eachother. The thought of looking collectively at how their view of themselves, how they have been used, and how they can rise from this does not occur in the narrative's conclusion. What lies in wait is what remains dormant in most stories. The male leaves the women to their squabble as he comes on top and better than ever. The women, in their frustration and miguidance, are confused into hating eachother.

“The more we blame speech for violence, the more likely we are to use violence to stop speech.”

— Dan McLaughlin (via beyondthesleep)

Presented by myself and @goodluckdetective without comment

"The computer's processes have unwittingly advanced the cause of women and images, even though these aspects of computer operation have nothing to do with the computer's content, which is the manipulation of information. The world of cyberspace is a computer-generated extension of the human mind into another dimension. The computer has carried human communication across a threshold as significant as writing, and cyberspaces's reliance on electromagnetism and photographic reproduction will only lead to further adjustments in consciousness that favor a feminine worldview. Irrespective of content, the processes used to maneuver in cyberspace are essentially right hemispheric. The World Wide Web and the Internet are both metaphors redolent of feminine connotations."

-The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain

A pretty interesting read. It analyzes the advancement in literacy throughout time and some of its pros and cons. It also brings up how we have become predominantly left brained due to the (often forced) use of our right hands, and how this has promoted linear thinking. It may not be a common practice anymore, but I've heard stories of educators hitting left-handed kids with rulers until they learned to write with their right hand. It's a strange thing to enforce, and it really makes one think...

The advancement in technology has a dark side, but the author suggests that some good will emerge in a new "Golden Age" where both right and left brain thinking reach some sort of equilibrium with the use of the internet. This is also interesting since I've been seeing parents, educators, and whoever else talking about the decline in reading amongst children. I'm starting to wonder if there will be a larger shift from text and back to image. Picture books/graphic novels seem to be grasping the attention of adults and children alike more and more throughout the years (if they weren't already). This is an observation of the English language, of course, since there are places that utilize symbols and characters in their writing.

i know this may be an unpopular sentiment but I truly loath how so many separatists groups are firmly and inextricably entrenched in witchcraft goddess worship woowoo shit.

I’ve been trying this out and it’s been quite helpful 🤗