Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

feminism

“The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” by Sue Monk Kidd

by Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine

Recommended to me by: Donna Smith

Sue Monk Kidd describes her awakening to the patriarchal values of the Baptist Church and Christianity in general. She describes her transformation in parallel with the myth of Ariadne as she claims the Sacred Feminine instead of an exclusively male spirituality. The writing is clear, evocative, and rich with references to other works, mostly written by women.

As Donna reminded me, the author isn’t required to get everything right at once. She sees her submissive, secondary position, names it, finds a spirituality grounded in the feminine, and dares to speak truth to power. At the same time, she does not name the privilege that allows her to risk marriage and career (but ultimately lose nothing), and travel to Greece for inspiration.

By the end of the book, she notices a solidity and inner authority born out of her search. I believe this is the goal for each of us, to listen inside for the Sacred.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Blindspot” by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald

by 1 Comment

Subtitle: Hidden Biases of Good People

Recommended to me by: Patricia Nan Anderson

In clear, accessible language, this book debunks the notion that good people are free of biases. Starting with optical illusions and moving on to creating categories, the authors show that our brains automatically make assumptions about what we perceive based on past input.

We have hidden biases, also called mindbugs, that function like the blind spot in our retinas. We don’t perceive that we are not perceiving accurately.

Implicit associations can reveal some of our biases. You may be surprised, disappointed, or relieved by your results.

The first one, insects and flowers, usually demonstrates a powerful negative association with insects and positive association with flowers. Try the Insects and Flowers Implicit Association Test. I was surprised how much more difficult it was to sort the flowers with the negative words.

I was pleased to get a neutral result for the Race Implicit Association Test but much less happy to see a moderate association between Black people and weapons in the Race and Weapons Implicit Association Test.

I wasn’t happy with my result for the Gender and Career Implicit Association Test either. Relatedly, a 1% difference in the rate of promoting women and men can explain the steep attrition rates of women in technical fields.

More Implicit Association Tests.

Present-day discrimination often takes the form of not helping, rather than actively harming. A woman’s hand was badly cut up in an accident. In the ER, her husband said, “You have to help her, she’s an avid quilter!” The doctor was talking about “quickly stitching her up” until someone greeted her as a Yale professor, whereupon she was whisked off to receive complex hand surgery from an expert in the field. It’s hard to call people out on not helping enough.

There is some discussion of how to circumvent mindbugs and blindspots. Awareness helps. So does exposure to images and ideas that contradict the mindbugs. I think the long-term fix is to change the media, literary, and educational portrayals that continually reinforce discriminatory biases. Without explicitly saying so, the book makes a strong case for affirmative action.

In the appendices, the authors show careful scientific evidence for the effect of present-day racial discrimination, despite the fact that it is less accepted to be overtly prejudiced.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in a readable, in-depth look at social justice and how your brain works.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Saber es Poder” by Maxine Harris, Fabiana Wallis, Hortensia Amaro

by 2 Comments

Subtitle: Modelo de Trauma y Recuperación para Mujeres Latinas

Translation: Knowledge is Power: Model of Trauma and Recovery for Latina Women

Recommended to me by: Fabiana Wallis’ bio at Conexiones

This book is a curriculum for a 25-session trauma recovery support group for Latina women. Since I hope to work with Conexiones Center for Trauma Recovery as a practitioner, my goal was to refresh my Spanish language skills and learn the vocabulary associated with trauma and recovery. It served that goal well.

The book also included specific information about Latino/a culture and issues for immigrants.

I read this book as both a practitioner helping people recover from trauma, and as a daughter of immigrants from Latin America who experienced trauma. I fit the target reader in some ways and not in others, especially since the book assumes a sharp separation between facilitators and group members.

The information was very basic, aimed at group participants who had never thought about trauma and its connection to present behaviors. There was recurring emphasis on the issues of drug use, prostitution, and unprotected sex. There was no discussion of the mechanisms of PTSD in the body.

In the various units, I saw identification of the damage wrought by trauma, but less help in building new skills than I expected. I imagine a woman reaching the end of the support group and thinking, “Now what?!” At the same time, I imagine that the opportunity to speak about past trauma and receive support would be healing in itself.

When used by knowledgeable and compassionate group facilitators, I think this book would form the basis for a useful, culturally aware support group for Latina survivors of abuse.

“The Mother’s Voice” by Kathy Weingarten

by Leave a Comment


Subtitle: Strengthening Intimacy in Families

I read this by coincidence, and it fits perfectly with themes I’ve been thinking about lately. Kathy Weingarten, a family therapist, addresses double binds that society creates for women around acceptable roles and definitions of success. She talks about dominating behaviors in men and how to address them. She weaves her personal story of motherhood, illness, and family together with societal trends. Throughout, she maintains awareness of intersectional issues of race, class, sexual orientation, and gender.

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she realized that her need to focus on her health conflicted directly with her need to be a “good mother” by focusing wholly on her pre-adolescent children. This contrast brought to light the invisible constraints society placed on her thoughts about mothering. She includes thoughts about the roles of wives and fathers as well.

At age 7, her son bullied her daughter, then 3 years old. She withdrew from his dominating behavior, and had to consciously reconnect with him. As she connects with him as “like her” rather than disconnecting as “alien, unlike her,” she has leverage to change the roles society prescribes for boys, sons, and men, as well as for mothers.

When she shares her true feelings and thoughts with her children in age-appropriate ways rather than maintaining a perfectly serene front, she builds real connections with them and allows them to see her as a separate person.

I appreciate how much consciousness and intention Weingarten brings to her mothering.

Some passages become repetitive, perhaps in an attempt to convince the reader, but that is a minor flaw. Overall, this is a beautifully written, carefully thought out, intimate gift of a book. Highly recommended.

Available at biblio.com

“The Female Man” by Joanna Russ

by Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: wordweaverlynn

Joanna Russ died recently, and many people have been posting tributes to her visionary feminist writing. I had heard of her, but not read her books. Someone linked to her short story When It Changed (full version at the link) and I wanted to read more.

Reading “The Female Man” is a bumpy ride. One always starts a book disoriented, looking for cues about what governs the setting and characters. All the way through, I was still looking for cues, still waiting to get oriented.

I loved the descriptions of Whileaway, a planet with only women. I could quibble with some of the authorial choices (everyone has babies around age 30, all children are taken from their mothers at age 5), but the relief of a society without patriarchy overrides all that.

I winced at the descriptions of the world of typical (middle class, white) women in the 1960’s. Again, I could quibble with some of the details, but there is too much painful truth there, and too much of it is still true.

“But I don’t like it,” she said simply. You’re not supposed to do that. On Whileaway, perhaps, but not here. […]

He takes her hand and closes her fingers around the glass, shaking his forefinger at her playfully: “Come on now, I can’t believe that; you made me get it for you—”

The third setting, a dystopia divided into Manland and Womanland, left me cold. I nearly stopped reading because of the sudden violence and contempt for gender-variance.

The book starts with a quote from “The Politics of Experience” about the layers of invalidation involved in the dynamics between men and women. With courage and clarity, this book cuts through all that. “Here is my truth! Here is my experience!”   I can see how it would be a lifeline to women drowning in invalidation.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Whipping Girl” by Julia Serano

by 1 Comment

Subtitle: A transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity

An illuminating book. Julia Serano describes her own experience as a transsexual woman, including the identities she explored before deciding to transition, and the internal and external changes she noticed during transition. She uses her experiences, carefully supported with research, to call out some of our societal assumptions and prejudices about gender.

She proposes that we all have a subconscious sex from birth. For people in whom it matches the body’s sex, it remains unnoticed, and leads to the assumption that it matches for everyone. For people in whom it does not match, it causes ongoing deep pain and sadness. Changing the body’s sex and gender presentation relieves the pain and leads to a sense of rightness instead.

She argues that rather than being marginal in feminism, the treatment of transsexual women is a central issue. Transsexual women are discriminated against because they have chosen to move from a societally more valued class – men – to a societally less valued class – women. She sees transsexual men receiving much less discrimination because they don’t violate the societal preference for maleness.

She notes in the introduction that her biggest challenge in writing the book is addressing several audiences: transsexual people, non-trans academics in women’s, queer, and gender studies, and those who want to learn more about transsexuality and feminism. I fall in the third camp, and found myself less engaged by detailed discussions of academic framing of transsexuality, or interpersonal politics in LGBT groups.

At the same time, I’m glad the material was there. Now I’m aware that many academics view gender as entirely socially constructed, and that transsexuals tend to be marginalized in LGBT groups because many of them express gender in a more stereotypically masculine or feminine way.

She argues that it is femininity itself which is devalued and under attack, being equated with weakness, passivity, and artifice. I see her point that she became more connected with her emotions when she started taking estrogen, and that emotions are devalued in our culture. I also see that women (and men) can enjoy dressing up to please themselves.

At the same time, I struggled with her assertion that femininity is natural. Many attributes I associate with femininity (rather than femaleness) are artificial and mandated by the patriarchy: dieting, makeup to appear youthful, hair sculpted with toxic chemicals, high heels, uncomfortable movement-impairing clothing, etc.

I agree that we need to accept each person’s gender expression as equally valuable, while also working to remove patriarchal manipulations of the expression of femininity (and masculinity as well).

Highly recommended to anyone interested in better understanding feminism, sexism, and transsexuality.

Available at bookshop.org.