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stefhyena's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Some really good insights not least the point returned to again and again both from a feminist and a "left" perspective that as your thinking changes you need to move with it, not just jump on bandwagons but try to take what is good from the past struggles with you and embrace new questions or issues. I feel like she is able to reconcile a genuine radical feminist impulse with a movement beyond biological sex and embodied gender...in parts of the book, in other parts (including the entirety of chapter 6) she is desperately obsessed with heterosexual desirability and dismissively mentions that some women may be queer or asexual as if this is a very small and insignificant minority.
Segal also talks about women's experiences of love and sex with other women as a phase or substitute for heterosexuality which she constantly betrays herself as seeing as "the real deal". I don't want her to silence her heterosexual experience and truth but just be more reflexive that this is not nearly the truth for most. She sort of pathologises the ageing female body- on the one hand I think it is positive to be honest that women still feel desire for love, acceptance and physical pleasure as they get older but on the other hand she constructs an impossible tragedy where the bottom line is "men will be men" and supposedly we want them anyway. Although if she got into the 21st century she would see that increasing numbers of us don't (for various reasons). I thought it was peculiar that she seems to be saying she is still working as a lecturer but she is so very out of touch with younger feminist trends and experiences, I would have expected her to at least read stuff published a bit more recently- her references were mostly older ones and when she was writing about the past that made sense but when she was contextualising the present it seemed a peculiar omission (or set of omissions).
In the introduction she seems to intimate that she will discuss activist motherhood and I was very keen to read about that, I felt we got crumbs and I would have liked more of this (rather than the thirsty old-woman lament which goes on way too long). I'd also like to see some criticism or awareness that even though motherhood is significant as a theme in feminism the women who can't or don't want to mother are even more left out than she claims mothers sometimes are. Some of her critiques of other thinkers seemed to boild down to "I don't like that thought" not a proper criticism...basically I desperately wanted a more critical eye in most of this. I thought the Jewish chapter was more critical but there's a possibility that i read it this way because it was on a topic I know very little about. I did however find it useful for helping me think.
The last chapter while not flowing very easily was peppered with interesting references which I would like to look at and moving the mood to one of hope and continued activism. No we don't, and never will have all the answers but all the same says Segal (and I agree with her) we should think and work toward the best, fairest outcomes that are possible- being both strategic in who we partner with but also ready to deconstruct a moment later what seemed like the "right" answer a moment before. I think there is no getting away from the continued necessity of activist scholars and thinking activists.
Segal also talks about women's experiences of love and sex with other women as a phase or substitute for heterosexuality which she constantly betrays herself as seeing as "the real deal". I don't want her to silence her heterosexual experience and truth but just be more reflexive that this is not nearly the truth for most. She sort of pathologises the ageing female body- on the one hand I think it is positive to be honest that women still feel desire for love, acceptance and physical pleasure as they get older but on the other hand she constructs an impossible tragedy where the bottom line is "men will be men" and supposedly we want them anyway. Although if she got into the 21st century she would see that increasing numbers of us don't (for various reasons). I thought it was peculiar that she seems to be saying she is still working as a lecturer but she is so very out of touch with younger feminist trends and experiences, I would have expected her to at least read stuff published a bit more recently- her references were mostly older ones and when she was writing about the past that made sense but when she was contextualising the present it seemed a peculiar omission (or set of omissions).
In the introduction she seems to intimate that she will discuss activist motherhood and I was very keen to read about that, I felt we got crumbs and I would have liked more of this (rather than the thirsty old-woman lament which goes on way too long). I'd also like to see some criticism or awareness that even though motherhood is significant as a theme in feminism the women who can't or don't want to mother are even more left out than she claims mothers sometimes are. Some of her critiques of other thinkers seemed to boild down to "I don't like that thought" not a proper criticism...basically I desperately wanted a more critical eye in most of this. I thought the Jewish chapter was more critical but there's a possibility that i read it this way because it was on a topic I know very little about. I did however find it useful for helping me think.
The last chapter while not flowing very easily was peppered with interesting references which I would like to look at and moving the mood to one of hope and continued activism. No we don't, and never will have all the answers but all the same says Segal (and I agree with her) we should think and work toward the best, fairest outcomes that are possible- being both strategic in who we partner with but also ready to deconstruct a moment later what seemed like the "right" answer a moment before. I think there is no getting away from the continued necessity of activist scholars and thinking activists.
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