Though the general sentiment (a perspective intended to empower women and unite us) is good, this borderline man-bashing is getting to me. Inga Muscio seems to imply that if you (Child of the Universe, Goddess incarnate) so much as go to a male gynecologist, you are somehow either not aware of the knowledgeable respect your body deserves, or else deeply mentally and emotionally subjugated. Sorry, no. Frankly, the only two gynecologists who have ever hurt me were women. (Of the other three, two were men.) One of these sensitive, intuitive women even intentionally lied to me about how much a certain procedure was going to hurt.
Further, that “men dearly love, cherish and respect women until death do us part as long as we’re [subservient to them]” is a bunch of bullshit. Humans of both genders are guilty of this, and neither gender possesses this mentality as a requisite. Part of the process by which I build my life is surrounding myself with people who will not treat me as an inferior.
I am glad to unite with other women for the purposes of support. There are indeed some things which my female friends understand much better than my male friends do. But to take as a unifying principle an unfounded battle against an entire gender is wholly unappealing. That’s not feminism.
On the other hand, the way she talks about the moon (who is my mistress, too) makes me melt. That’s empowering and beautiful, getting to know oneself in the context of the world around. Too bad that for Muscia, this world includes men only as a necessary evil.
It’s entirely possible that her position is not as extreme as I’m making it sound; but, seventy pages into the book, it seems disturbingly one-sided.
Re: Cunt. (Re:counting.) I haven’t read it in about three years, but my spotted memory of it is that yes, it’s uneven. What I gained from it wasn’t a series of bullet points on why we should hate, or at least mistrust, men. Obviously, I’m not a misandronist, any more than I want men to be misogynist, and I wouldn’t recommend or hand out writing on that grounds. No, what it said to me was, “have you ever *really* looked at your cunt? thought about it? talked about it? wondered about it? learned from it? Why not?” I became comfortable with the word, so much so that I wish everyone else was already. I developed a more playful attitude about it, even while learning more respect for it.
I related to women primarily through gender, not sexuality. (Well, I related to nothing through sexuality, three years ago.) I didn’t want to appreciate my cunt, because hey, what had it ever done for me? And I’m not saying I read the book and then went off and had great sex; but it did make me aware that I could do a lot better for it, and thereby myself, than I was – and that maybe it would reward me in turn, and then it wouldn’t be an it and a me but an us.
So it was empowering, not by releasing me from subjugation to men’s prejudices, but from helping to release me from my own.
That sounds about right, cee. I am certainly glad to be reading it. The history of the word (and other words relating to women) is certainly interesting, even though she only has one primary reference to her information (Walker’s 1983 Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets).
Spending a few unhurried hours reading this book, today, was a veritable luxury, let me tell you. :)
I have to admit, I never finished it. I hit a wall when she started talking about the evils of The Pill and IUDs, and how the rhythm method is the best method of birth control, and didn’t our ancestors know best? Well, historically speaking, our distant ancestors are the ones who invented the IUD; women used to insert pebbles into their womb to prevent pregnancy. So…grr.
Day late, dollar short.
I took this to be one woman’s take on the world. Yeah, she’s probably saying (a lot) how she thinks Things Should Go, but then again, everyone I know does that. She just gets more flak because she wrote a book about it. :)
Frankly, she can write what she wants. I didn’t agree with her all the time, and so I ignored those parts, went over them to places where I did agree. And there was a whole lot of that. Not reading the book because she says things that I don’t agree with, that I might even find offensive, is silly, given the high proportion of things I agree with her with for at to.