50 book challenge. Book 9.
Apr. 1st, 2007 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deliriumcrowSeductress: Women who Ravished the World and their Lost Art of Love, Elizabeth Prioleau
As a history book, this looked interesting, especially as I seem tobe getting drawn more into women's history lately. So I read it. Though parts of it were, in fact, quite interesting, as were several of the people she had listed as seductresses, for the most part it left me rather unimpressed. Her attempts to relate things to prihistorical goddess worship I found unconvincing at best, as of all the footnotes, those claims had almost no entries. It's *pre* history for a reason.
Additionally, I don't really think that encouraging women to embrace the stereotypically male prerpgative of sluttery is necessarily a good thing. There was no real sense of love or respect from most of these women, and for all that they got laid plenty, and probably did in truth love at least some of their men (like Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley) this was barely affressed as any even vaguely relevant part of the story. She stated over and over that she wanted women in a position of superiority in love, with male slaves fawning over them, and that anything less than that is subscribing to the dogmas of patriarchy. Frankly, I don't buy it. From a purely biological standpoint, it's foolish. Men are simply less necessary to the continuation of the species, as (sex for pleasure is here strictly being ignored) men are capable of inpregnating as many women as they like in a very short time, whereas women are capable of bearing the child of one man at a time in a very, very time and resource consuming process. a woman's role in this would then be to pick from the masses the best father for her child. Serial monogamy, or possibly the set-up found in crow (and other avian) societies -- they pair for life to maintian the resource pooling required for the chicks, but the fathers are nto always the same if momma finds a better father -- would seem to be the rational result of this -- not one woman hoarding all the men in the room, taking them from other women who are, presumably trying to do the same. The end result here, it seems, would be femal in-fighting worse than we have already. And never, ever, any love or respect, and certainly nothing like equality.
A good deal of the advice she gives isn't really even useful, as in teh chapter on intellectual women. She says that men are not intimidated by intelligent women, but you know, in my experience that's not really true, because in general the average *people* are intimidated by intellectuals regardless of gender. And, as the vast majority of people are somewhere around the average, then, well, if you have the barins enough to impress an einstien, you will most likely be shunned by the rest of society for being too smart. No one likes to be made to feel lesser, so if you run about spouting interesting theories, you'll probably alienate all but the top portion of men. But then, that's probably not a gad thing, after all. (I have actually been known to do things like that as a sort of sifting measure -- but I never did claim that it was either a perfect plan, or that it would attract anyman I wanted, as she does.)
I think my biggest problme with this book was that it was written more or less like a self-help book (I hate those things) with acafemic leanings, and in so doing managed to fail at both. As a self-help book it was too academic, and as an academoc text it was too sensational, too short, and too lacking in suffucient detail for me to make my own interpretations of the woemn and situations in question.
As a history book, this looked interesting, especially as I seem tobe getting drawn more into women's history lately. So I read it. Though parts of it were, in fact, quite interesting, as were several of the people she had listed as seductresses, for the most part it left me rather unimpressed. Her attempts to relate things to prihistorical goddess worship I found unconvincing at best, as of all the footnotes, those claims had almost no entries. It's *pre* history for a reason.
Additionally, I don't really think that encouraging women to embrace the stereotypically male prerpgative of sluttery is necessarily a good thing. There was no real sense of love or respect from most of these women, and for all that they got laid plenty, and probably did in truth love at least some of their men (like Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley) this was barely affressed as any even vaguely relevant part of the story. She stated over and over that she wanted women in a position of superiority in love, with male slaves fawning over them, and that anything less than that is subscribing to the dogmas of patriarchy. Frankly, I don't buy it. From a purely biological standpoint, it's foolish. Men are simply less necessary to the continuation of the species, as (sex for pleasure is here strictly being ignored) men are capable of inpregnating as many women as they like in a very short time, whereas women are capable of bearing the child of one man at a time in a very, very time and resource consuming process. a woman's role in this would then be to pick from the masses the best father for her child. Serial monogamy, or possibly the set-up found in crow (and other avian) societies -- they pair for life to maintian the resource pooling required for the chicks, but the fathers are nto always the same if momma finds a better father -- would seem to be the rational result of this -- not one woman hoarding all the men in the room, taking them from other women who are, presumably trying to do the same. The end result here, it seems, would be femal in-fighting worse than we have already. And never, ever, any love or respect, and certainly nothing like equality.
A good deal of the advice she gives isn't really even useful, as in teh chapter on intellectual women. She says that men are not intimidated by intelligent women, but you know, in my experience that's not really true, because in general the average *people* are intimidated by intellectuals regardless of gender. And, as the vast majority of people are somewhere around the average, then, well, if you have the barins enough to impress an einstien, you will most likely be shunned by the rest of society for being too smart. No one likes to be made to feel lesser, so if you run about spouting interesting theories, you'll probably alienate all but the top portion of men. But then, that's probably not a gad thing, after all. (I have actually been known to do things like that as a sort of sifting measure -- but I never did claim that it was either a perfect plan, or that it would attract anyman I wanted, as she does.)
I think my biggest problme with this book was that it was written more or less like a self-help book (I hate those things) with acafemic leanings, and in so doing managed to fail at both. As a self-help book it was too academic, and as an academoc text it was too sensational, too short, and too lacking in suffucient detail for me to make my own interpretations of the woemn and situations in question.
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Date: 2007-04-02 04:25 pm (UTC)There is the concept of women being liberated, but they can still, and often do, enslave themselves by their very liberation. Being slutty, showing too much skin in a (sadly) desperate attempt to get male attention, etc.
This is a topic that I could endlessly discuss, so I'll keep it short and cut myself off here.