The Clitoral Truth

The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips by Rebecca Chalker
2000
Weight: 1.2 lbs
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

It was the time of vagina books and clitoral love, and it was wonderful.  I was a sex-obsessed teenager, which seems gross now, but was SO awesome then.  I soaked it all up, and I think that it is because of books like these, lesbianism, and good parenting on my mother's part that I grew up with a healthy, adventurous, and fairly safe outlook about sex.

This book taught me that, not only does female ejaculation exist, but it is fun and exciting.  Nothing to worry about and many people really relish the possibilities.  I learned that men and women were not born all that different, and later it was not at all challenging to understand that not just gender but sex could be fluid.

I found out about On Our Backs and was able to enjoy it for several years before it stopped being made.  I learned about how important the clitoris is.  I was having sex before I got my hands on all these vagina books, but I truly believe the sex must have improved dramatically with the more I learned. 

It is hard to know what to do with these wonderful books.  I want them to go to good use, but I am not always sure how to get them into the right hands.

Diary of a Blue-Eyed Devil

Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society

Inga Muscio

2005

Weight: 1 lb

Method of Disposal: Putting in a Better World Books Bin

I have finally finished the last Inga Muscio book I own.  After Cunt impressed me so much when I was around 16, I kept feeling like I needed to read her other work and kept collecting them as they came out, even though I had come to the realization that Cunt was much less mind blowing than I thought and a little more offensive.  If you have read my past blog, you know I was not enthralled with Rose.  I decided to read this one on the heels of that one so I could go ahead and just get rid of them.  It took me all month.

I will say that this one was much much better than Rose and even had snippets where I could get into her voice and what she was saying all over again.  I believe it is important for Americans to face the rampant racism and imperialism of our country.  I appreciate that she put so many provocative truths forward, but she continued to let me down.  For someone who thinks so much about discrimination, reclaiming and the power of words, and various isms she really seems to be lacking an understanding or a willingness to understand (dis)ability.  How are we still using “retard” three books in?  How is it that this book is the first one I remember seeing ability looked at in its own right, and each time it was brought up it was in a superficial or blase way, if not thrown out as an insult.  It would be so easy to fix!  

I am sure no one will be shocked, given that I work at an animal shelter in the South and see cruelty/neglect on a daily basis, that I was not all that thrilled with her tangent about companion animals and spay/neuter.  That is not to say that I think animals exist to be our pets and that I do not, also, have a problem with how we breed, abuse, dominate, and mistreat them.  I do not think, in an ideal world, we would have so many animals in homes and contained.  I do not think that if breeding were controlled and animals were treated with true humaness that we would have to spay/neuter them.  I can understand and empathize with the resistance to spay/neuter, but the benefits to the animals far outweigh the negative.  I think of the thousands of pit bulls on chains, euthanized, abused every day and cringe at the thought of making more that will suffer the same way their peers did.  I would rather spay one pit bull than watch their offspring starve to death, live in crowded shelter conditions waiting for death, get hit by cars, so on and so forth.  And this goes for all pets, but I use pit bulls because I love them so and they are the least adopted, most mistreated companion animal of all time.  Also, Inga Muscio has a friend who use to have to sleep with a gun and a PIT BULL every night because of living amongst gangs.

I like how she describes her love for America, as well as her dislike.  I appreciate that she took the time to lead the reader to see the beauty of this racist, imperialist country even while exposing gross injustice.

I do not like the stories about her blowing up on random strangers, like the woman on the plane who asked her what she was eating.   Inga is sure it was because the woman was white and the food did not fit into her worldview of normal.  I am not so sure.  Sometimes, I question her reason and her anger management.  A woman asking about some noodles got blown way out of proportion.  And, even if that was what was going on, couldn’t you find a better example of everyday racism?  Or educate the woman instead of confuse her? This book was way too long and contained way to many disconnected snippets.  I read the first 200 pages quickly and suffered through the redundancy and negativity of the last 300.

She has a good idea.  She says important things.  But it is always face value, and intentionally over-the-top-shock-value material.  She never achieves a tangible, well thought out, connected piece of work.  This is the last Inga book I will read, no matter how many more she writes.  I am sorry about that.  We have so much in common and so many interesting/useful differences, but I am done.  It has become overwhelming and reading is supposed to be fun/educational/helpful/inspirational/enraging/meaningful/something else.  I mean, I am supposed to feel something other than irritation, I think.

Side note:  I do not quite understand the idea of her choosing not to swim in the ocean, which she loves so much, because the ocean is so mistreated.  It talked to her and told her.  People do massive damage to the ocean and the planet, and we should be angry, but really, what does not swimming in the ocean do to help the situation really?  You will have to read the section for yourself.

Rose: Love In Violent Times

Rose: Love in Violent Times  Inga Muscio

2011

Weight: 9.6 oz

Method of Disposal: Donating or Giving Away

I fell in love with Cunt: A Declaration of Independence when I was 16.  It got me excited.  I proclaimed that I would buy 100 copies and give them all away for free before I died, just to spread the word.  I wrote Inga a letter telling her about my plan, thanking her for writing, and asking her to sign a book.  She sent back an autographed copy and some Cunt stickers I carried around with me, never deciding on where they would get their best use.  

I did buy quite a few copies of Cunt.  I gave them to friends.  I bought the revised copy.  To this day, I still have one of the original yellow books, one of the revised blue books, and the autographed yellow copy.  I quit buying them right as I got into college.  I was reading so many amazing things.  It just kind of faded away.  It was not until much later that I found my disappointments with the book.

Despite my growing distaste, I continued to buy her books.  It meant so much to me at 16, and that means something no matter what I learn, feel, think in the now/future.  

I just pulled Rose off the bookshelves and read it for the first time.  I was disappointed.  It was all over the place and never seemed to come together in any real way.  The chapters were labeled differently, but I so often felt like I was reading the same thing over and over and over.  It is her stream-of-consciousness, blunt writing that is her strength, but it can also be her weakness.  I like that she does not write as if she is smarter, more educated, wiser than other people.  I like that she says things that make sense.   I worry when she compares the opening of a Wal-Mart to the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan.  It feels like a painful and inaccurate comparison even though I agree that Wal-Mart does terrible things.  I could even think of a lot of ammunition/information to throw behind the argument that a Wal-Mart opening could be like a bomb—but I did not get it from her.  She mentions is, but she drops it quickly and moves on, like almost everything else.   I do question some of the research, statistics, information she sites.  There should be a good way to not fall into the rut of academic writing but still give me a clue as to where you got your information that rape has gone up dramatically since the Iraq War (and things like that).  I do not doubt that it has, but I want to know more about it and read more about it.  

I have disdain for the use of “retarded” in the first Cunt and for the flippant anti-prostitution analogies used in Rose.  I just do not see the need.  I think it is unnecessarily hurtful, though possibly unintentional.  Just, if you are asking us to think about our words then think about yours.

I think Inga is a great activist, a passionate writer, and probably a loving person.  I am just not so easily amped up anymore.  I have grown and changed.  I am no longer moved by the language and voice I once was.  Again, I am still thankful for that energy I was given as a teenager, but in the future I hope to read far more useful books on the same topic.  We do need to find love in these violent times, afterall.

"At First Women Were Reluctant to Talk"

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
2001
Weight: 9 oz.
Method of disposal: Attempting to give it away through a social networking site. If I cannot I will move on to plan B.




Today, I am parting with my copy of The Vagina Monologues, complete with the highlighting of the fifteen year old I was when I bought it. I saw it on a shelf in the drama section at Waldenbooks when I worked there, and I bought it because of the title. I read the book that same night and loved it. It started a sort of-affair. I went to see college productions of it on a regular basis throughout the years and one time I went with my friend Sarah to see it done by Eve Ensler herself. Later, I would volunteer at an event that hosted Ms. Ensler and Jane Fonda. A whole group of us took a picture I have never seen. I remember Eve Ensler’s hand on my shoulder. Even later, I would go to Charis with a very attractive queer preacher to see her talk about her publication, The Good Body. This is yet another time when I will be disbanding a book from a complete collection of all the books written by an author.
I use to be in awe of Eve Ensler. Can you tell? There has been a gradual letting go of that awe over the last six years and now I have a dull curiosity when I see her name in print. I will continue to read about her and her work. But I also think about that initial collection where a father buys his daughter a vagina—the only intersex narrative in the book—with dismay. She has spoken with students about it for years and compromises have been worked out, but it lingers in my copy and thousands of others. I think of Jakarta, Warsaw, Kenya, and other places where The Vagina Monologues has traveled and the mixture of emotions about it expressed in the feedback—the validity of the feelings of those who loved it and those who hated it. I love talking about sex, bodies, and sexuality. I also recoil from gynocentrism, and its effects on our beliefs about gender and sex as binary systems.
There is a lot good about Eve Ensler and about The Vagina Monologues, and I will never forget my initial love for it. It is time for me to move on now. Looking at my highlights, “My Angry Vagina” was my favorite piece in the collection when I first read it. In hindsight, it is hard to imagine growing up without it. I found this book at the perfect time. It did what, I think, it was intended to do. It helped me fall in love and/or maintain my love for my genitalia—though I do not think my vagina is the truly important component of my anatomy. It pales in comparison to my clitoris, my ears, my neck, and my back.