(cw: disordered eating; pejorative language re: mental health) I. Hysteria was basically the medical explanation for ‘everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in women’, a conclusion only supported by men’s (historic and continuing) dominance over medicine, and hysteria’s continued use as a synonym for “over-emotional” or “deranged.” – Ada McVean “The History of Hysteria“Continue reading “the body – (hysteria)”
Tag Archives: gender
tiny rebellions
During my first marriage, struggling to hang in there (for reasons I will not enumerate) and struggling with the guilt of not wanting to hang in there, I read a book by a Christian author who said that the purpose of marriage was to make you “holy, not happy.” Holy, not happy. As though marriageContinue reading “tiny rebellions”
the body (second movement)
I. A woman sat in a rocking chair in front of my house and cheerfully enumerated to me and the other mothers in attendance the ways in which her church taught members’ pre-adolescent daughters that if they had sex outside of/before marriage they would be permanently damaged. “You give each girl a balloon and theyContinue reading “the body (second movement)”
the body (first movement)
I. Once upon a time, the mother of a man I loved told me that she was surprised her son was attracted to me, given my body type, as she had been taught that men were typically attracted to women with a physicality like their mother’s. “I have quite large breasts,” she pointed out, “andContinue reading “the body (first movement)”
On walking.
I. My latest (mild) obsession is with a certain type of video that keeps making its way onto my algorithmically-generated TikTok “For You” page. These videos typically feature young, white, presumably cis(?) women demonstrating the ways in which they prepare themselves to be perceived as young men when facing the public. The instructions in theseContinue reading “On walking.”
Undusted Corners 