FEMINIST BOOKS MAILBAG: Here’s my post, “Ten-Cent Tour of Women’s Studies.”

John W. Brewer: What, you never read Mary Daly? She was by far the most flamboyant/ridiculous/self-parodic feminist Deep Thinker I read when I was in high school. (I see also no Simone de Beauvoir, but she may have been so hopelessly pre-Second-Wave as to be irrelevant by the time you were reading this stuff.)

I’ve never tried de Beauvoir, but as for Daly–if you ever figure out what the heck she’s talking about, feel free to let me know. And people think Joyce is hard to read!

An anonyreader: This was my (straight-female, young-and-confused-but-angry) favorite feminist passage in my years of angry young womanhood:

“Our preference for mechanical and pharmacological agents of birth-control is irrational. Our position with regard to the function of sex is absurdly confused. The other systems which have occasionally been referred to (in this book) have had a certain internal consistency, outlandish though some of them may seem. There is no logic in a

conceptual system which holds that orgasm is always and everwhere good for you, that vaginal orgasm is impossible, that no moral opproobrium attaches to expenditure of semen wherever it occurs, that considerable opprobrium attaches to the bearing of unwanted children, and at the same time insists that ‘normal’ heterosexual intercourse should always culminate in ejaculation within the vagina. These are the suppositions which underlie our eagerness to extend the use of modern contraceptives

into every society on earth, regardless of its own set of cultural and moral priorities….

“Another name for this kind of mental chaos is evil.”

(Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility, p. 128-9)

And Jendi Reiter: You might enjoy “Cognition & Eros” by Robin May Schott — British philosophy professor (I think), basically critiques the ascetic tendency in Western classical and Christian philosophy, saying that the devaluation of the body has meant the devaluation of women and a fear of admitting that one is dependent and mortal. Marred slightly by Marxist jargon, but a great book nonetheless.

If you’re a horror fan, I recommend the 1950s French film “Eyes Without a Face.” Creepy, beautiful example of the mad-scientist genre, whose impact comes from suspense and tragedy rather than gore. Also Doug Clegg’s book “Neverland.”