SuZieCoyote

Great For a Child of the 50's

Revisado: 12-10-24

This book put a lot of things into perspective for me. as I was a child when most of it was happening. It describes, in detail, the monumental and often chaotic changes happening during that time. From a personal perspective, it helped me understand much of my parents' and grandparents' behavior and habits. I remember my mother gushing over the "Checkers" speech and voting for Nixon because "his wife wears a cloth coat, not a fur." People were easily led in the 50's and perhaps are easily led today. But the thing that stood out for me the most was that there were very limited channels of information - and all of it tightly controlled. Peoples' vulnerability to propaganda in the 50's was understandable; there wasn't much choice in the matter. People today don't have that excuse, but still fall for charlatans. Curious.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Simply Appalling

Revisado: 08-17-24

I knew many fundamentalists were damaged people, with the men often violent, but this book lays it out in startling detail. What struck me, though, was that it was her MOTHER who got her involved with this horror in the first place, by placing her in a fundamentalism church and insisting she attend regularly, brainwashing her daughter into a wicked and demeaning belief structure from an early age. it is frequently the women who do this to themselves and their daughters. My "deeply Christian" mother would often whip me, and be otherwise violent, pulling my hair, slapping my face, throwing me into showers for trivial mistakes, and then, when my own daughter was born, advise me to "break her spirit," something I refused to do. It is women who genitally mutilate their daughters. Women who place their 9-year old daughters under the veil. Is it because they are terrified of men?

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Should be called "PollyAnna Speaks."

Revisado: 12-02-23

I can't remember the last time I was so angry at a book. The idea that we can just talk nice and gain equality is simply ridiculous. Every chapter was "we just have to understand men better." I understand them very well. I have been in the USA workforce until I retired a couple years ago. It's a bloody mess of constant, grinding, daily sexism. "Talking it out with the other," doesn't hack it. I tried for 50 years. Look at what is happening in the USA (and globally.). We are losing ground everywhere. In the USA, they have criminalized our bodies in many states by taking away our right to reprductive freedom and they are trying to take birth control as well. In some places they are tying to implement the death penalty for any woman who chooses not to carry a handful of cells to birth. Whatever we are doing....it isn't working, and nice seminars by privileged women with happy, smiling, hopeful women in the audience, is not doing the trick. Until women leave the churches that foster this hate and repression of us, nothing will change.

The only strong point in the book (and the reason for two stars, rather than one) is the emphasis in a couple of chapters on women breaking their conditioning of self-denigration and hatred, a self-hatred that consumes so many women on the right.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Well Argued Perspective

Revisado: 10-22-23

After thinking about this book for a while, I downgraded to four stars. Here are the reasons.

I agree with all her summary points except "marriage is good." We do need to take sex more seriously. Hookup culture is bad for women. Rapists should be in jail. Porn is destructive to healthy sexuality. Woman should wait until they know a man well before agreeing to sex. All these make sense. No woman deserves rape, but there are situations in which she can find herself a target and common-sense ways of avoiding these situations.

However, the author makes unsupported leaps, pretending to base them on science and research.

1. For example, she cites the fact that rapists are more likely to target young nubile girls (true fact) than other women, but her reasoning is off when she claims that means rape is more about sex than power. If a rapist is going to do a power move and rape a woman, wouldn't he be more likely to attack someone vulnerable and young? The author's conclusion doesn't fit the data. If a rapist can't get to his preferred victim, he will make do with a middle-aged or elderly woman. It happens frequently. If rape is primarily about getting sex, why are so many rape victims beaten severely or even murdered? That sort of violence is not primarily about sex; it's about power.

2. The other area where her facts do not support her conclusion is in the area of marriage. There is no proof of the author's assertion that miserable women were only a tiny point on some mental graph, that in true academic form, she mentally constructed. She maintains that because only a few women were miserable enough (and affluent enough) to dare divorce early in Victorian history, that women miserable in marriage must be only a tiny few. What were women's alternatives? She goes on to say, even a slight reduction in penalties for divorce resulted in lots of women pursuing divorce. That doesn't sound to me like miserable women were only at the far end of the bell curve. When divorce became more available, women headed for the door as fast as they could and in droves, even though they knew life would be extremely tough for them single. 70% of divorces are instigated by women. The idea that the bulk of these divorces are simply because people fell out of love (presumably the woman, since she is more likely to initiate divorce) and wanted a clean slate is insulting. No woman I have ever known to instigate divorce proceedings has done so as a lark; no woman I have ever known has thrown out a perfectly good husband, especially if she has children. They leave because, primarily, of abuse, infidelity or financial irresponsibility. This isn't difficult to see; it is hiding in plain sight, but Perry ignores it completely. In fact while occasionally saying the equivalent of "abuse is bad," she completely fails to consider the impact of abuse on marriage and single motherhood. If women are forced to stay in marriages that are abusive, the abuse only grows worse. Louise Perry, while claiming to support the common woman, is only about 30 years old, has never apparently lived in an abusive marriage and is relatively privileged. I suspect if her husband started using her as a punching bag, she'd bail too. She might want to speak with some real women, not just those in her head.

She also ignored the evidence that married men are happier than married women, and unmarried women are happier than unmarried men. In other words, her marriage "solution" favors men - something she harps on about the sexual revolution (and I mostly agree with her). Marriage is good for some people; perhaps half, and I suspect that is because the male partner in these happy couplings sees himself as a partner, not a lord. But that's not the case with at least half the men out there, who have been socialized to be owners/masters, rather than partners.

We could do a lot to improve the lives of children if we used the tool we have - no not marriage - but paternity tests (which male politicians and judges frequently resist). Perhaps if men had some incentive to behave themselves - knowing if they father a child, they will pay for that child for at least 18 years, it might be as effective or more effective than going back to the old patriarchal standard of telling women how to behave and locking them into lifetime servitude.

I grew up in the 50's in Kansas. There were no happy married women anywhere in my sphere - not in my family and not in the families of friends and acquaintance. Not in the church women who were willing to talk about it; I saw some show up with black and downcast eyes, refusing to discuss what happened. Domestic violence was accepted (I saw it in my own home and watched as the police laughed and smoked with my father about "these wives can get so hysterical, I only gave her a little slap.") Frequently this abuse was sanctioned (especially by the church) and women had no economic ways to escape once they had children. I vividly recall having no food because my father was out drunk spending all the family money. A pastor brought a bag of groceries and a long lecture on how God insists she stay with my father because "marriage is sacred." Well, it certainly wasn't sacred to my father - besides being drunk all the time, he was nonchalantly and frequently unfaithful. The author is right that two parents are best for children - data is clear, but those two parents need not be married. Getting married still means, for many women, handling over the keys to one's life to someone who will only honor his commitment as long as it suits him.

What I would like to see is some sort of a childhood contract. If a couple wants to reproduce, there should be a contract between them to support the child equally, stay together to greatest extent possible, and to provide for an out in the case of abuse. It should stipulate no other formal relationship for either partner until the kids have been raised to at least 18 years old. At the end of the contract, the couple could go their separate ways if they so choose. If a man gets a woman pregnant and a paternity tests reveals him as the father, he should be on the hook for money and time needed to care for the child. And the courts should be proactive in holding him to it. Forcing women into marriage isn't the answer.

While I don't agree with everything this author says, her overall perspective is right on. I came of age in the early 70's. "Free Love," while generally free for the men, turned not to be "free" for the women who got pregnant or an STD, and were then abandoned by their "I'm a free spirit" partners. It took drugs and alcohol for most of us females to conform to this approach. Something was wrong, but we're being told, "Look at your freedom!" Freedom, but to what end? The sexual revolution has not been kind to women, and the porn revolution has been absolutely destructive to women and to relationships. Men and woman, as the author exhaustively details, have different evolutionary reproductive strategies. Women have now been convinced that they should abandon their innate strategy of restraint, high standards and careful selection, to engage in sex hookups the "male way," with no commitment and no real connection. "Friends with benefits," exemplifies this. We don't want to go back to the 50's (and before), but we do need to work out systems that honor the female and her biology and recognize that (in general) men do see sex differently than women.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

I love Japan, Japanese food and this book.

Revisado: 10-01-23

First, I'd like to say I really loved this book and wish I had listened to it before heading to Japan a couple of weeks ago. It was very informative about the various food styles, eateries, and customs surrounding eating in Japan. There were recommendations for every price bracket and taste - down to earth ramen with various toppings at about $7, perfectly constructed, and weird dishes of various sea life offal, as well as $400+ Kaizeki meals. Goulding is a master of metaphor and he made many of the dishes sizzle in the telling; I could almost taste some of them.

But the overuse of superlative metaphors was, in my view, sometimes detrimental to the book. After a while I tired of tortured prose with comments like becoming "weak at the knees" after spotting a Maiko (Geisha in training.). Really? Weak at the knees? I think that's a bit over the top.

That said, I will likely also buy the book in kindle form, anticipating a return to Japan as soon as I can afford it.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Uplifting

Revisado: 01-16-23

As someone who has dealt with CPTSD after a chaotic and violent childhood, I found this book to be very helpful. The personal insights shared show that reframing events can change the way we see the past. Childhood violence and abuse are common in the USA, often culturally and religiously sanctioned and just accepted as "they way things are." It is less a personal failing of parents but an intergenerational system to break people down for societal control. I've read many books on childhood abuse and PTSD, but most were written from a scientific/psychological perspective by professionals. My mind always found them useful, but never really broke through the emotional damages. This book was written from the heart and in terms the heart can understand. The most important insight was that sometimes, you will never get the love you should have had from the people who should have provided it, You didn't get it. You won't get it and you have to find other sources of love. After a lifetime of mourning the lack of care and concern, letting go and accepting the fact that either your parents didn't love you, had conflicted feelings about loving you or didn't have the emotional ability to even love themselves is freeing.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Moving and Powerful

Revisado: 07-16-21

This was a powerful story of a girl living under the most repressive regime in the world, ruled by a cruel dictator. The book made me think about my fortunate life and the risks we face thinking a strong man will fix all our problems. I’ve read reviews that say she has exaggerated or lied, but those reviews seem to have a political ideology to support (i.e., potential N. Korean plants). Some have said, “Oh, it’s not as bad as she says.” Yet, one only must consider the young American, Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned for 17 months for stealing a propaganda poster on a lark, beaten beyond recognition, his limbs distorted, with his teeth completely “rearranged” and in a terminal coma after his diplomatic release, malnourished and skeletal, unable to speak or recognize anyone around him. He had been forced, months earlier, to make a sham “confession” of subversion. He was just a college kid, being a dumb kid. The N. Korean government tried to pass all this off as a result of botulism, which doctors immediately dismissed after examination. Having visited S. Korea, I don’t doubt her story at all as I was told by S. Koreans that the situation in N. Korea was horrible. Some people have combed through her interviews, when she could barely speak the languages in which she was questioned - S. Korean dialect, Chinese, or English, looking for tiny inconsistencies over which to brand her as a liar. I can only believe these people are working on behalf of the N. Korean government. Considering the trauma she endured from very early in her childhood and her naivety, I see these accusations as adding cruelty to an already cruel life. She was brutally honest about the things she had to do to survive and her role in them. I was torn about the Christian missionaries who helped her escape. While she could not have left N. Korea without their help, she was harshly shamed by them for working in a chat room to survive and support her mother – even though she never even disrobed during the conversations. Some have criticized the narration harshly, but I feel the lack of affect (emotion) in the narrator’s telling of Park’s story mirrors that of an individual dealing with PTSD. I had no problem with it. The book has made me deeply appreciative of all that I have and the fact we don’t live under a dictator here.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Great Book! Timely

Revisado: 10-01-20

I see the right-wing snowflakes couldn't wait to post whiny reviews. Yes, the author does not care for Trump and he makes this clear, but he doesn't go on about it. The book is 99% about the problems inherent in social media and 1% political. And when it does get political, it is in direct response to the problems of social media created by propagandists - for example the "Pizzagate" mess - a clearly right-wing fabricated "conspiracy" that almost got people killed and got one, likely decent man, jailed because he believed it. Many of the reviews are from people who come on here, ignore the meat of the book, looking for any sign of the political left, scour the text for something they don't like, and then claim persecution against "their side." It's the same old "they're picking on poor us." These criticisms are just propaganda and should not turn anyone off about the book, which is superb, thoughtful, and accurate. Jaron is a clear-headed thinker about technology and our society, and sees clearly how social media is degrading every area of our lives.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Ignores the Work of Alice Miller

Revisado: 09-13-20

This is a great book. A lot of research went into it and it is very revealing, so I gave it four stars, though a part of me wants to give it only one star, the lowest grade possible. I won't do that because there is a lot of good in the book. I have one criticism and it is a huge one. I'm halfway through the book and there is no mention of Alice Miller's groundbreaking work on the link between fascism and child abuse. Blumenthal gives himself and Philip Greven, another male writer, credit for the discoveries that Alice Miller made and published in 1979 in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child. (Greven wrote his book, Spare the Child, in 2010.) There is no way, given the extensive research in this book, that the author could be unaware of Miller's ground-breaking work. He appears to have simply ignored it. This "erasure" of women's contributions makes my blood boil and is unforgivable. I probably won't buy another Blumenthal book for this reason alone.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

1950's Advice - Be Strong, Yet Feminine (Whatever)

Revisado: 09-09-20

Mostly stereotypical ways for women to behave. The author talks about being true to one's own self and then turns around and talks approvingly of Marilyn Monroe's flirting facade, how she turned it on and off and how we all should do this. I took great offense at his rant against "the ice cold woman" - a mythical creature who is ugly and cold to everyone all the time. He should try being a woman in the workplace sometime. Be warm, friendly and "flirty" and the men will like you, but don't expect a promotion or a six figure income. Those go to women who keep themselves professionally aloof and professional. I've met women who are tough and occasionally difficult, but never the ugly woman he describes. Methinks she is a male night terror. The author, a man, clearly has never had to deal with attempted assault on a business trip because some man he smiled at took that to mean "come and get it." If you want likes rather than achievement, go for it. Perhaps his advice is acceptable in relationships - I don't know. I know I personally can't play these games. I can't believe he's helped all the women he claims to help - at least not from a professional perspective.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 6 personas