Here’s another thought-provoking little snippet from Fifty Shades of Feminism, edited by Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach. In ‘When It Started for Me’, Gillian Slovo notes that, in the women’s groups she used to attend, ‘we questioned the subordination that came not just from outside but also from inside ourselves’.
The sixteen most scandalous charges
Another review from Third Way Jan./Feb. 2013. This time by Nick Spencer, who discusses Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began, which tells the story of a Renaissance bibliophile. I’m not sure that I’m that interested in the book, but the concluding lines of Spencer’s review really made me laugh. Here they are:
the book’s line on the charges read against Pope John XXIII at Council of Constance is worth its cover price alone: ‘Fearing their effect on public opinion, the council decided to suppress the sixteen most scandalous charges – never subsequently revealed – and accused the pontiff of simony, sodomy, rape, incest, torture, and murder.’
Now, what else could he have possibly done?
How to think more about sex
little while ago, I mentioned having come across the notion that men think about sex every seven seconds but couldn’t remember where I had read it. Now I know. I must have dipped into the Third Way issue of Jan./Feb. 2013. It’s Simon Jenkins who brings this up in a review of Alain de Botton’s How to Think More About Sex. Looks like de Botton’s book is set to address this lamentable shortfall, urging us to give a bit more thought to sex. I have to get hold of that book. Quickly!
Seriously, though, I do agree with Jenkins’ comment that we tend not to ‘give enough quality reflection to this fundamental human drive’. So, yes, I really will make sure to get a copy of How to Think More About Sex.
Freedom is fragile
Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.
Germaine Greer, as quoted in Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach (eds), Fifty Shades of Feminism
I should have been a writer
There are some truly sad anecdotes in Fifty Shades of Feminism, edited by Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach. Muneeza Shamsie, for instance, in ‘The Words of Women’, reflects on her mother’s fate in Pakistan, noting that, ‘on the last night of her life, she rang my paternal aunt Tazeen and said, “All these years I was turned into a housewife and made useless! I should have been a writer!” Such a self-revelation’, Shamsie comments, ‘at eighty-six, a few hours before dying!’
Scapegoating
… as soon as you have high levels of fear, the risk of scapegoating becomes very real.
Once again Helena Kennedy, in Third Way Jan./Feb. 2013
Karl Möller 