#inga muscio

[rainforestvag]

Summer TBR (so far)

A Court of Silver Flames (ACOTAR series) by Sarah J. Maas

Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she's struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can't seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it. The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre's Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta's orbit. But her temper isn't the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable, and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other.

Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts. Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance-and healing-in each other's arms.

House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City series) by Sarah J. Maas

Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life-working hard all day and partying all night-until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She'll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.

Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose-to assassinate his boss's enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he's offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City's underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion-one that could set them both free, if they'd only let it.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood—the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers—Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah—the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio

An ancient title of respect for women, the word cunt long ago veered off this noble path. Inga Muscio traces the road from honor to expletive, giving women the motivation and tools to claim cunt as a positive and powerful force in their lives. In this fully revised edition, she explores, with candidness and humor, such traditional feminist issues as birth control, sexuality, jealousy between women, and prostitution with a fresh attitude for a new generation of women. Sending out a call for every woman to be the Cunt lovin Ruler of Her Sexual Universe, Muscio stands convention on its head by embracing all things cunt-related. 

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

"Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Though the gifts of wildish nature come to us at birth, society's attempt to 'civilize' us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become overdomesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped."

In her now-classic book that spent 144 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list, and is translated into 35 languages, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., shows how woman's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archaeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconscious. Dr. Estés uses her families' ethnic tales, washed and rinsed in the blood of wars and survival, multicultural myths, her own lyric writing of those fairy tales, folk tales, and stories chosen from her life witness, and also research ongoing for twenty years… that help women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.

Glenstone Field Guide 02 Edited by Emily Wei Rales and Fanna Gebreyesus

This Field Guide intends to serve as a lighthearted, by no means exhaustive primer for the curious Glenstone visitor. Structured as an illustrated index, it is divided into three sections: art, architecture, and landscape. Each section includes related terms and entries written by Glenstone staff and collaborators. Collectively, these voices share the multiple ideas, histories, anecdotes, and facts that make up the Glenstone story, and offer a glimpse into what can be seen onsite. Integrated throughout are statements from founders Emily Wei Rales and Mitchell P. Rales that highlight the key principles of community, sustainability, design, integration, and direct engagement, which guide Glenstone’s mission. Glenstone exists for you, our visitor, and we hope you will explore, engage, enjoy, and return often. You are always welcome.

[santoschristos]

Symbiotic Relationship

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves.” --Carl Jung

“Love is a positive, symbiotic, reciprocal flow between two or more entities.” --Inga Muscio

Image art by Mahaboka

[itsagoodlife]

Love is a positive, symbiotic, reciprocal flow between two or more entities.

Inga Muscio

[hearts4bridget]

there’s a book by inga muscio, aptly named ‘cunt’ that explores this, a good read :p

petition to replace "motherfucker" "bitch" "cunt" "whore" "slut" "pussy" TO "fatherfucker" "dick" and other male degrading swear words. there arent enough degrading swear words for men. even while degrading them, we are degrading ourselves.

[howieabel]

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again.” ― Inga Muscio, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence

[jaynedolluk]

BOOKS OF 2018

This is very late but I still wanted to do it. (It only covers the books I read that came out in 2018 or a year or so earlier - I still have a big stack of books to read)

A couple of writers who’s work I really love are Nikita Gill + Fiona Helmsley (will definitely look out for more books by them). I don’t tend to read that much fiction but I did read Caitlin Moran’s How To Be Famous (the sequel to How Build A Girl) - one of the best bits for me was the character of Joanne ( think that’s what she’s called) who is so clearly based on Courtney Love she should get a co-writing credit :)

I read memoirs by Amanda LePore, Rhyannon Styles, Rose McGowan, and James Rhodes & John O’ Farrell (the last two were sequels). Also Michelle Tea’s book, Against Memoir which is more of a collection of essays on various subjects which I really loved. Another book I really liked was Chris Kraus’s book on Kathy Acker. 

Read a few self help type books this year plus a couple of good ones on mental health - Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet + Natasha Devon’s A Beginner’s Guide to Mental Illness (they both look at mental health but also consider the wider impact of issues in society/popular culture) . Read Recovery by Russell Brand which I liked but I preferred the bits where he wasn’t just going over the whole 12 Steps thing. Loved Ruby Tandoh’s book Eat Up which talks about food, appetite + issues around food with a few recipes thrown in - everything from food in prison to how fat people are treated to issues around the concept of ‘clean eating’ - her writing is engaging + interesting and she talks about the joys of eating Creme Eggs or drinking cold Coke straight from the fridge as well as cooking healthy vegan stew or cake. 20th anniversary edition of Cunt came out (I really must try + compare it to the original to see if/how it’s been changed) 

Was delighted to see The Story of The Face, a big coffee-table book full of gorgeous pics detailing the rise + fall of the iconic style mag.

Also read You Play The Girl by Carina Chocano which looks at various female roles in popular media. + The Girl by Michelle Morgan which examines Marilyn Monroe from a feminist viewpoint in particular around the time she made The Seven Year Itch,

I read Andrew O’ Neill’s book on the history of heavy metal which is very funny but concentrated a lot on speed/thrash/black metal (which I’m not so keen on). And Joseph Vogel’s book, This Thing Called Life which looks at the various themes in Prince’s music over his career. Also a book I really liked was We Were Going To Change The World which is interviews with women involved in the California punk scene in the 70s/80s. 

Undoubtedly my favourite book of the year was Good Booty by Ann Powers which looks at race/sex/gender + how they have affected/been influenced by popular music in America.

[ask-the-bully]

Do as I say, not as I do.

[hedonisticramblings]

Deep.

You might not think-especially on my end as an indigenous, non-straight, white passing trans individual-that your male heritage gives you an elevation of privilege, but damn if white gays ain't gotta' fuck ton of the cheddar privilege, educate yourself.

Quote by Inga Muscio.

[anyroads]

I know I talk a lot about calling bullshit on the Inga Muscio “celebrate your period don’t medicate it be one with it” feminism that ignores people whose periods are a constant source of debilitating pain and exhaustion but I want to be very clear about one thing:

When I hit menopause I’m having the biggest party you’ve ever fucking seen. There will be a bouncy castle. There will be a uterus shaped piñata that I will beat the crap out of with glee. There will be giant balloons spelling out “bye bitch” and a giant cake in the shape of the words “see you in hell.” I will ceremonially cast my menstrual cup in gold and celebrate it just to spite my uterus because each little silicone friend I’ve had has done more for me than this god forsaken organ that returns all the feeding and housing I give it with vicious tantrums and inflicting endless suffering onto me. It will be an epic party and anyone who has ever had a uterus is invited.

[elisaenglish]

Books are my lifeblood. They are the gift my mother gave me, not least of all because – as with the familial generations that preceded her and through circumstance not choice – she never received them herself. Although she couldn’t have known what she intellectually had on her hands with me, she did understand that breaking cycles comes from embracing what you’re terrified to hold. Or to read or to write, especially when you can’t.

It’s a story, I suppose. But never one that I’ve felt is mine to tell – and I haven’t. Except now she’s halfway gone and I don’t know how long we’ve got, I wonder whether I’ll have to reconstruct her one day, that this is my gift, my terror. Not to break a cycle, but to complete one. And if love is immortality, then I have to pass it on.

Whether the goddess is in the questions or the cumulative answers that yield yet more, we are the precipice becoming. Feminism isn’t a label or an identity and, whilst we flirt with ideology, I still think that it’s too politically charged, too abstract in conceptual terms to fully capture the visceral stance – in defence of self and other.

Balanced scales, balanced hearts. Everything in equilibrium.

And no, not in any way or shape or default, always necessarily female.

As to the why? To paraphrase Maya Angelou, Why wouldn’t I be on my own side? A side further in and farther on than socially determined gender norms or archaic modes of being. A side that is not so much a binary line as an opening to what has closed upon itself, either in substance or in meaning.

One word after another, page by page, and on...

As I return once more to books, I remember that my greatest freedom has been that I’ve read from the first unbounded. My literary breadth, depth and contextual scope aren’t confined to the feminist sphere by any stretch of the imagination; but I’ve roamed there nonetheless and, suffice to say, it is the current course.

In this regard, we see tastes trending towards Atwood and a revival of the like but lesser-knowns; Naomi Alderman offers up The Power should you have a penchant for cautionary reversals; but for me, it’s still Carter that reigns and her ever so unsettling castration fantasy – The Passion of New Eve – that litmus tests the nerve:

“At the end of the second month, she took off all my remaining bandages and inspected me without a word. Then she opened the wall upon the mirror and left me alone with myself.

But when I looked in the mirror, I saw Eve; I did not see myself. I saw a young woman who, though she was I, I could in no way acknowledge as myself, for this one was only a lyrical abstraction of femininity to me, a tinted arrangement of curved lines. I touched the breasts and the mound that were not mine; I saw white hands in the mirror move, it was as though they were white gloves I had put on to conduct the unfamiliar orchestra of myself. I looked again and saw I bore a strong family resemblance to myself, although my hair had grown so long it hung down to a waist that, on the operating table, had acquired an emphatic indentation. Thanks to the plastic surgery, my eyes were now a little larger than they had been; how blue they were showed more. The cosmetic knife had provided me with a bee-stung underlip and a fat pout. I was a woman, young and desirable.

[…]

Let the punishment fit the crime, whatever it had been. They had turned me into the Playboy centrefold. I was the object of all the unfocused desires that had ever existed in my own head. I had become my own masturbatory fantasy. And – how can I put it – the cock in my head, still, twitched at the sight of myself.”

Tip of the revelatory iceberg, I tend to think. Although technically it falls under the critical auspices of feminist fabulation. Either way, it’ll reflect his mettle – and yours if you’re up for it.

But I promised you debate, not fiction – layers of the living kind and ours, as women. So here it is, complete with the usual perspectival caveat and varying degrees of intersectionality, my list of eighteen. It’s neither absolute nor essentially prescribed; just what has steered my lens to clarity. I could wind it back to Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames and her proto-feminist assertion that:

“Condemning all women in order to help some misguided men get over their foolish behaviour is tantamount to denouncing fire, which is a vital and beneficial element, just because some people are burnt by it, or to cursing water just because some people are drowned in it.”

I could hover over Wollstonecraft, meander through A Room of One’s Own, abandon Woolf for De Beauvoir, then on to Friedan, Lorde and Hooks, go the Greer or Dworkin route, or the academic one via undergraduate staples such as Judith Butler and Hélène Cixous. I could. But I’m keeping it here and now, and only so far back as I go – and maybe one day you’ll do the same for your girls, for your futures:

Everyday Sexism, Laura Bates

Men Who Hate Women, Laura Bates

Misogynation, Laura Bates

Asking For It, Kate Harding

Down Girl, Kate Manne

Know My Name, Chanel Miller

Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Inga Muscio

Rose, Inga Muscio

Bitch Doctrine, Laurie Penny

The Mother of All Questions, Rebecca Solnit

Whose Story Is It Anyway?, Rebecca Solnit

Three Women, Lisa Taddeo

Full Frontal Feminism, Jessica Valenti

The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti

Sex Object, Jessica Valenti

The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf

Promiscuities, Naomi Wolf

Not All Dead White Men, Donna Zuckerberg

Occasionally I wonder whether I would’ve wanted someone more like me for a mother. I wonder if we would’ve had a different dialogue, a different ending. But then I remember that without who she was – and is on her better days – I wouldn’t be me.

Read freely, ma fleurs. Be well in yourselves, have faith in each other. Now let’s go build a thing. Because that’s who we are, and these are our verbs – compose, construct, cultivate. Here, now, always. So we are, together.

[the-angry-witch-forgot-pass-blog]

Just bought like 9 feminist theory books on thriftbooks, I dont regret a damn thing.

Alright, the books I ordered;

Gyn/Ecology : The Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly

Cunt : A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Pornography : Men Possessing Women by Andrea Dworkin

Womens History of the World by Rosalind Miles

SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas

Rejected Princesses : Heroines Too Hardcore for Hollywood by Jason Porath

Politics of Reality : Essays in Feminist Theory by Marilyn Frye

Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Great Cosmic Mother : Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Barbara Mor and Monica Sjöö

And all of it for under $70. In like, 8-10 days this blog will probably be flooded with quotes. Fair warning.

Just added;

When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone

A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland

Mercy by Andrea Dworkin

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

[420mermaid]

During orgasm, muscles in the body contract, then relax, thus releasing emotions. Reich asserted that all aspects of healthy human psychology are dependent upon one's sexual expression. When you cry laugh or feel free as a bird after coming, it is partly because you just released a bunch of yucky crap that's been building up inside your body for days, months, years, possibly your entire lifetime.

Inga Muscio - Cunt: A Declaration of Independence

[feminism-quotes]

Inga Muscio

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Sunday Edition: Seal Press

This Sunday we are featuring our collection from Seal Press, “one of the most enduring feminist publishing houses to emerge from the women’s press and independent press movements of the 1970s.” Seal Press has published groundbreaking anthologies, fiction and manifestos that helped define the development of third-wave feminism in the late 1990s. In 1987, Seal Press won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Special Award for Excellence in Publishing, and the Bumbershoot Bookfair Award for Most Significant Contribution in 1989. Oberlin College Libraries and Special Collections have a wide range of archives from this collection from 1976 to 2002 including rejected manuscript queries, posters and mechanicals, memorabilia, and more. On display we are featuring several books from our collections that deal with different aspects of womanhood and feminisms: Valencia by Michelle Tea; Where Oceans Meet by Bhargavi C. Mandava; Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio; The Black Women's Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves by Evelyn C. White; Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers by Kang Sŏk-kyŏng, Kim Chi-wŏn, and O Chŏng-hŭi; and A Vindication of the Rights of Whores by Gail Pheterson. Come to Mudd Center and check out our complete collection! 

[anna-constance]

“People seem to have a hard time responding to a woman’s sexuality without having the desire to literally touch it. I guess in some ways, sexuality implies that, but I don’t think sexuality necessarily invites someone else to participate. I don’t want people to interpret my work as an invitation to fuck me.” - Inga Muscio

[pearwaldorf]

content notes: gendered slurs, current events, US politics So Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a cunt. I will note that the use of this particular four letter word is very much contextual, as the Brits and other Commonwealth countries don't treat it as the damning insult it is in the US. (I want to think it's because of Shakespeare and his dick/vagina jokes, but it's probably not.) "Cunt" isn't exactly a word that's part of my common vocabulary, but "bitch" was. It took a long time for me to stop using it as a reflexive insult/slur, something you reach for when somebody cuts you off in traffic or is rude to the cashier. Which is not to say that I don't use it. But I use it much less than previously. There is a difference in the way men and women use gendered slurs like this. Men will use it willy-nilly, like it's the worst thing you can say about a (cis) woman. It's so hilariously reductive, as if they expect it to be the most cutting insult you could say. (If I had to choose between a rape threat and being called a cunt, I'd much rather have the latter, ijs.) Women? In my experience in the US, their use of the word is specific, calculated. It's not a thing you say about a frenemy or an annoying coworker. It's reserved for deep, angry betrayal. And there's usually a racial and class component to it as well, because a woman who I would consider deserving of this epithet weaponizes or at least uses their racial and class privilege to deflect from the harm they've done or let happen. Ivanka Trump posting a picture of her with her baby on Twitter while her father green-lights policies that tear families apart? Yeah, I can see why somebody would call her that. Further reading A Brief History of the Word "Cunt" in Popular Music, Bitch Magazine Cunt, a Declaration of Independence, by Inga Muscio (this was a v formative book for young Alice)