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Reviews tagging 'Child death'
Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Jude Ellison S. Doyle
4 reviews
suneaters's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
I have lots of thoughts on this book. There are many places I could begin this review, but I feel I should focus in on one area. That is something Doyle doesn't do. While this would work well as an introduction to numerous literary analyses, it doesn't stand well on its own unless you are preaching to the choir. A reader might not agree with Doyle's assessments as she doesn't add a lot of context nor does she linger long to make a particular argument strengthened via evidence and analysis, though there are a few through-lines that help. Nonetheless, I am the choir, so I did appreciate many elements of this book. I was especially interested in how the mothers of serial killers Ed Kemper and Ed Gein were blamed.
However, I am also diametrically opposed to "squint a bit" feminism. Doyle has written a dossier on sex-based oppression (menstruation, birth, motherhood, pregnancy, etc are all uniquely female afflictions), but then she adds a veneer of "inclusivity", which is mostly reminding the reader that of course she isn't excluding anyone with these things that only occur in half the population and thus exclude the other half, TWAW, blah, blah, blah. It's very jarring whenever it happens, even if most of the hand-wringing is confined to a footnote and one extremely offensive quotation about pregnancy. In here, Doyle becomes not the T. rex (hear me roar, oppressors), but the people in the jeeps. Please don't eat me, oppressors. But can I blame her? The section on the hate she saw on Reddit (a male supremacist cesspool) about herself was illuminating. As the recipient of many death and rape threats, I understand that it's very different when they know your name and mention your children/family. But still, she postures. "Women, once unleashed by the social progress of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, can only keep going...When we open our mothers, our oppressors will fall silent...I am Woman. you there, in the Jeep: hear me roar" (146). But the people in the Jeep, the males, do hear you. You speak so kindly to a large group of them. You reassure them. You fall silent for them. Doyle, you are inviting the wolves into the sheep-pen and roaring at the sheep who are upset by this. We can only keep going, except now we're having trouble even defining ourselves as a group worthy of protecting.
Doyle also seems to believe that the solution to sexism is a post-sexualist society which is so stupid on so many levels. Haven't we learned that “I don’t see race” doesn’t magically fix racism? Time is a circle and we should go back to before we had the words men and women. But we will still have half the population who give birth and the other half that doesn’t and sexism will still exist. I suppose this is par for the course for a woman attempting herself to opt out of patriarchy. "Maybe, if we unlink sex and love and gender and parenting, we can put families together in ways that actually fit the people involved: motherly men taking years off to be with babies, powerful mothers loving their children without giving up the world, inseminating mothers and pregnant fathers and families with no men or women at all" (172). In this magical society, all problems will suddenly cease and no one will be homosexual anymore (as is the implication whenever Doyle mentions PIV sex like it is somehow revolutionary and gay). Doyle, as a heterosexual female, would easily be able to find a partner as the vast majority of people are attracted to the opposite sex, no matter what they call themsevles. Reading her utopia sounds like hell for the homosexual. No words to describe yourself, but hey women can "fertiliz[e] other women" (130). Ew.
Disappointing, but let's move on to her words and analyses. I learned some new things, but her overall points aren't well argued or defined. For example, Doyle posits that Geraldine is male or at least a "phallic snake" lady in the poem Christabel. Her analysis here is shallow. If I had not previously read and analyzed the poem, maybe I would have taken her word for it. But I have and I didn't. This poem is better seen as a portrayal of lesbianism, but that is something Doyle refers to largely by a slur in this book. She cites that one to two trans people are killed in the USA each week. In actuality, it's about 32 per year. A horrible number, of course. But this makes them the safest demographic to be. Doyle says "That number rises every year" (77). No citation. She just thinks it must. Doyle then dips her toes in rape apologia by citing that lying about ones sex is fine. Of course, you shouldn't kill someone for doing this, but you shouldn't rape people either. Doyle also feels that "The stereotypes...use[d] to damn transgender women's sexuality are, on some level, the same as the ones used to damn all female sexuality: deceptive, malevolent, an irresistible incitement to violent for any men who are "tempted" or "led on" by the woman in question...it stems from the same basic patriarchal need for control" (78). Men do not like other men who dress in a feminine manner. This does not make them women. Women being unnerved by these men, who retain male pattern criminality and a very large number are in jails are for sexual violence/rape, does not make them "transphobes". Doyle here, just like patriarchy, wants to punish women for noticing. Not all men! How dare you notice what's happening? You're a feminazi/TERF!
There isn't context in this book. Everything is skimmed from the top. I understand that this would make the book longer than the Bible, but without it, this book is left only as a collection of ideas that someone else could expand on. "The archaic Mother has always belonged to trans women, too. The Roman Goddess Cybele...was sometimes depicted as intersex, with both a penis and a vagina" (130-1). Are transwomen intersex now? No intersex person like that exists and it is only an intersexist porn trope. What does that have to do with transwomen, who can never have a vagina and of whom perhaps some still have penises, at all? Doyle then goes on to mention castrated males who "present[ed] themselves as feminine in public" (131). She's more cautious here, saying that "It is risky to attribute present-day narrative to people who lived so long ago", but leans into the idea that heterosexist ideas of castrated males being "not really men" who are used by men as sex slaves alongside women, to continue sexual violence but sidestep homosexuality (131). Very progressive! What's not even pretending to be progressive is "Andrea" Long Chu. Andrew Long Chu is a white man with a fetish who watched too much sissy porn (by his own admission: "sissy porn did make me trans"). No, with several fetishes who is racist and sexist. He abused his nameless Asian girlfriend and sees women in general as nothing but vessels to fuck ("Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is"). Now, Andrew says "pregnancy is a form of body modification so extreme that its result is another person In this, it resembles nothing–except, perhaps a sex change" (131). Pregnancy is a natural process with its own risks that are often understated and hidden to entice women into accepting it. Transition is an unnatural process with its own risks that are often understated and hidden so we can keep sterilizing gay children. So, I suppose there are some similarities, but not in the way this man thinks. Do you agree with Aristotle that the female is a mutilated male? This book does.
Doyle also has time to be homophobic in this book. "The existence of women who can feasibly get each other pregnant" and mentioning "corrective rape" on the same page is beyond parody (79). You cannot support corrective rape rhetoric (the kind that says gay people can be into the opposite sex and that PIV can be gay if we say it is) and then act like you care about corrective rape and the sexual violence bisexual women and lesbians experience. Get real.
However, I am also diametrically opposed to "squint a bit" feminism. Doyle has written a dossier on sex-based oppression (menstruation, birth, motherhood, pregnancy, etc are all uniquely female afflictions), but then she adds a veneer of "inclusivity", which is mostly reminding the reader that of course she isn't excluding anyone with these things that only occur in half the population and thus exclude the other half, TWAW, blah, blah, blah. It's very jarring whenever it happens, even if most of the hand-wringing is confined to a footnote and one extremely offensive quotation about pregnancy. In here, Doyle becomes not the T. rex (hear me roar, oppressors), but the people in the jeeps. Please don't eat me, oppressors. But can I blame her? The section on the hate she saw on Reddit (a male supremacist cesspool) about herself was illuminating. As the recipient of many death and rape threats, I understand that it's very different when they know your name and mention your children/family. But still, she postures. "Women, once unleashed by the social progress of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, can only keep going...When we open our mothers, our oppressors will fall silent...I am Woman. you there, in the Jeep: hear me roar" (146). But the people in the Jeep, the males, do hear you. You speak so kindly to a large group of them. You reassure them. You fall silent for them. Doyle, you are inviting the wolves into the sheep-pen and roaring at the sheep who are upset by this. We can only keep going, except now we're having trouble even defining ourselves as a group worthy of protecting.
Doyle also seems to believe that the solution to sexism is a post-sexualist society which is so stupid on so many levels. Haven't we learned that “I don’t see race” doesn’t magically fix racism? Time is a circle and we should go back to before we had the words men and women. But we will still have half the population who give birth and the other half that doesn’t and sexism will still exist. I suppose this is par for the course for a woman attempting herself to opt out of patriarchy. "Maybe, if we unlink sex and love and gender and parenting, we can put families together in ways that actually fit the people involved: motherly men taking years off to be with babies, powerful mothers loving their children without giving up the world, inseminating mothers and pregnant fathers and families with no men or women at all" (172). In this magical society, all problems will suddenly cease and no one will be homosexual anymore (as is the implication whenever Doyle mentions PIV sex like it is somehow revolutionary and gay). Doyle, as a heterosexual female, would easily be able to find a partner as the vast majority of people are attracted to the opposite sex, no matter what they call themsevles. Reading her utopia sounds like hell for the homosexual. No words to describe yourself, but hey women can "fertiliz[e] other women" (130). Ew.
Disappointing, but let's move on to her words and analyses. I learned some new things, but her overall points aren't well argued or defined. For example, Doyle posits that Geraldine is male or at least a "phallic snake" lady in the poem Christabel. Her analysis here is shallow. If I had not previously read and analyzed the poem, maybe I would have taken her word for it. But I have and I didn't. This poem is better seen as a portrayal of lesbianism, but that is something Doyle refers to largely by a slur in this book. She cites that one to two trans people are killed in the USA each week. In actuality, it's about 32 per year. A horrible number, of course. But this makes them the safest demographic to be. Doyle says "That number rises every year" (77). No citation. She just thinks it must. Doyle then dips her toes in rape apologia by citing that lying about ones sex is fine. Of course, you shouldn't kill someone for doing this, but you shouldn't rape people either. Doyle also feels that "The stereotypes...use[d] to damn transgender women's sexuality are, on some level, the same as the ones used to damn all female sexuality: deceptive, malevolent, an irresistible incitement to violent for any men who are "tempted" or "led on" by the woman in question...it stems from the same basic patriarchal need for control" (78). Men do not like other men who dress in a feminine manner. This does not make them women. Women being unnerved by these men, who retain male pattern criminality and a very large number are in jails are for sexual violence/rape, does not make them "transphobes". Doyle here, just like patriarchy, wants to punish women for noticing. Not all men! How dare you notice what's happening? You're a feminazi/TERF!
There isn't context in this book. Everything is skimmed from the top. I understand that this would make the book longer than the Bible, but without it, this book is left only as a collection of ideas that someone else could expand on. "The archaic Mother has always belonged to trans women, too. The Roman Goddess Cybele...was sometimes depicted as intersex, with both a penis and a vagina" (130-1). Are transwomen intersex now? No intersex person like that exists and it is only an intersexist porn trope. What does that have to do with transwomen, who can never have a vagina and of whom perhaps some still have penises, at all? Doyle then goes on to mention castrated males who "present[ed] themselves as feminine in public" (131). She's more cautious here, saying that "It is risky to attribute present-day narrative to people who lived so long ago", but leans into the idea that heterosexist ideas of castrated males being "not really men" who are used by men as sex slaves alongside women, to continue sexual violence but sidestep homosexuality (131). Very progressive! What's not even pretending to be progressive is "Andrea" Long Chu. Andrew Long Chu is a white man with a fetish who watched too much sissy porn (by his own admission: "sissy porn did make me trans"). No, with several fetishes who is racist and sexist. He abused his nameless Asian girlfriend and sees women in general as nothing but vessels to fuck ("Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is"). Now, Andrew says "pregnancy is a form of body modification so extreme that its result is another person In this, it resembles nothing–except, perhaps a sex change" (131). Pregnancy is a natural process with its own risks that are often understated and hidden to entice women into accepting it. Transition is an unnatural process with its own risks that are often understated and hidden so we can keep sterilizing gay children. So, I suppose there are some similarities, but not in the way this man thinks. Do you agree with Aristotle that the female is a mutilated male? This book does.
Doyle also has time to be homophobic in this book. "The existence of women who can feasibly get each other pregnant" and mentioning "corrective rape" on the same page is beyond parody (79). You cannot support corrective rape rhetoric (the kind that says gay people can be into the opposite sex and that PIV can be gay if we say it is) and then act like you care about corrective rape and the sexual violence bisexual women and lesbians experience. Get real.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, and Murder
Moderate: Homophobia and Lesbophobia
Minor: Child abuse, Child death, and Torture
bi_n_large's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Misogyny, Rape, Violence, Blood, Pregnancy, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Transphobia, Cannibalism, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Cultural appropriation
thereadingshelf's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Blood, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, and Sexual harassment
barbsantos's review
It was a bit boring, lots of examples of the same thing
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Gore, Gun violence, Blood, Excrement, and Cannibalism
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