#chollet

[luxe-pauvre]

In Une vie à soi (’A life of one's own'), a sociological enquiry into French women living alone, Érike Flahault distinguishes between women 'en manque’ - who feel something is missing but put up with their situation, despite some suffering; women 'en marche’ - who are learning to appreciate their situation; and the 'apostates du conjugal’ - women who have left marriage behind, who are deliberately organising their lives, loves and friendships outside the framework of the couple. Of the first set, Flahault observes that, no matter their personal trajectory or social class (her interviewees include a one-time farmer as well as one very wealthy woman), these women are quite at a loss once deprived of the option to play the good wife or good mother: they share 'the same socialisation experience, one strongly marked by the gendered division of their roles and a deep attachment to these traditional roles, whether or not they have the opportunity to realise them'. In contrast, the conjugal apostates have always cultivated a critical distance, sometimes even wholesale defiance in relation to these roles. And they are creative women, who tend to read a lot and lead a rich life of the mind: ‘They live beyond the range of the male gaze, beyond that of most others, for their solitude is populated with works of art and with people, living and dead, dear as well as unknown, encounters with whom - whether in flesh and blood or in thought, through their oeuvres form the foundations to the women's sense of identity.’ These women consider themselves individuals, not representatives of female types. Far from the miserable isolation that prejudice associates with women living alone, the ongoing shaping of their own identities creates a dual effect: it allows women to overcome, even to enjoy, a solitude which most people, married or unmarried, must confront, at least at times in their lives; and it allows them to nurture particularly intense relationships, connections built from the core of their personalities rather than on conventional social roles. In this light, self-knowledge is not an egoism, not navel-gazing, but a fast track to meaningful engagement with others. Contrary to the line peddled by unending propaganda, traditional femininity is not our best hope for survival: far from ensuring our immunity, seeking to embody traditional roles, to adhere to their values, only weakens and impoverishes us.

Mona Chollet, In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still On Trial

[petit-atelier-de-poesie]

Il existe une parenté étroite entre la pulsion amoureuse et la pulsion narrative, et je n’ai jamais pu résister à une bonne histoire.

Mona Chollet. Réinventer l’amour. Comment le patriarcat sabote les relations hétérosexuelles. 2021

[haggishlyhagging]

The first feminist to disinter the witches’ story and to claim this title for herself was the American Matilda Joslyn Gage, who fought for women's right to vote and also for the rights of Native Americans and the abolition of slavery—she was given a prison sentence for helping slaves to escape. In Woman, Church and State (1893), she offered a feminist reading of the witch-hunts: “When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women’, we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity.” Gage inspired the character of Glinda, the good witch in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was written by her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum. When he adapted the novel for cinema in 1939, Victor Fleming created the first "good witch" in popular culture.

-Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women are Still on Trial

[imalicja]

Lovely @komplikacije tagged me to post 9 books that I am looking forward to reading in 2025. Thank you 🥰

I’m a kindle/library girlie but I got these for my birthday or Christmas or I bought them myself with the work discount 🥹 So since I already have them, I want to read them soon for sure.

Tagging all my mutuals who like to read 😗😗😗

[rapha-reads]

Bonjour le French Side of Tumblr, quelqu'un aurait-il un abonnement Mediapart et pourrait faire tourner la chronique de Mona Chollet ? J'ai très envie de le lire, et je pense que ça pourrait intéresser pas mal de gens aussi.

[oshen26]

"Le sentiment de culpabilité pourrait être l'envers d'un désir de toute-puissance qui est forcément contrarié ; et on préfère avoir l'impression qu'on a fait faux et qu'une situation, qu'un malheur éventuellement, est de notre faute, parce que c'est trop insupportable de penser qu'on a aucune prise sur certains événements."

Mona Chollet au micro de Folie Douce

[nyktipolos]

Back from a trip to Hydra, a Greek girlfriend tells me that, on display in the local museum, she saw the embalmed heart of the Hydriot sailor who most fiercely fought off the Turks. "Do you think, if we were to eat it, we could become as brave as he was?" she asks me, thoughtfully. [...]

Chollet, Mona. Introduction to In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial, trans. by Sophie R. Lewis. St. Martin's Press, 2022.

[unmondesanspourquoi]

Les femmes apprennent à s’envisager comme un spectacle offert aux hommes et au monde en général

Mona Chollet, Beautés fatales

[ephemeryde]

Mona Chollet - D'images et d'eau fraîche

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Reinventing Love: How the Patriarchy Sabotages Heterosexual Relations

By Mona Chollet.

[maryrouille]

Book Review. Reinventing Love: How the Patriarchy Sabotages Heterosexual Relations by Mona Chollet (2024)

In July of this year, a book by a famous French feminist and the author of In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still On Trial (2022), appeared on the publishing market. Although Reinventing Love was originally published in 2021, we have to wait three years for the English translation.

Mona Chollet, journalist and essayist does not hide the fact that this book belongs to feminist positions. She also does not shy away from evaluations and subjective commentary, which is already heard in the particularly extensive introduction. The following chapters based on citing selected novels, films or posts on social media become more analytical.

(...) our whole amorous culture tries to naturalize and even celebrate the signs of male domination and female submission, by presenting them as the secrets of a harmonious union. [p. 70]

This brings new values, especially from the point of view of someone unfamiliar with French-speaking culture. But it is worth remembering that this is only a selection of topics that interest the author, such as sexual power, diminishing the merits and position of women in relation to men, domestic violence and the eroticization of a woman's image. However, treating this reading as a collection of essays that refer to statements repeated many times in feminist literature and are supported by examples from cultural texts, it is an interesting attempt to assess the structure of relationships (not only love ones) created by representatives of the opposite sex.

Personally, it was new for me to see the perspective of women of different races and the additional stereotypical traits attributed to them due to their background. I also found the chapter on women's erotic objectification to be great, as it presented the essence of this phenomenon.

How to reinvent love?

And finally, the most important question that occurred to me when I reached for this book: how to reinvent love? Mona Chollet does not give a clear answer to this question, but she indicates, through the prism of her own experiences, possible ways to create healthy, equal and partnership-based love relationships. She also gives, what is even worth considering the most valuable, a lot of examples that we should not imitate.

[luxe-pauvre]

One way to interpret the scenario of the woman rejected in midlife is to understand that her partner can no longer bear to see in her, as if in a mirror, the signs of his own ageing. Or perhaps he leaves his middle-aged wife so that he is free to rejuvenate himself via a new partner: ‘Loving the next generation is a kind of vampirism’, according to Frédéric Beigbeder, for example, who takes pride in his 'Dracula side’. But we may also consider a different theory: he sees his wife's ageing, but not his own. 'Men have no bodies' - so says Virginie Despentes, who, in my opinion, we should be taking at her word. Men's dominant position in economics and politics, in love and family relationships, but also in the artistic and literary worlds allows them to be absolute subjects and to make women into absolute objects. Western culture decided early on that the body was repulsive - and also that it was female, and vice versa. Theologians and philosophers projected their horror of the body onto women, and were thereby able to disavow the claims of their own bodies. Saint Augustine explains that, in men, the body reflects the soul, but that this isn't the case for women.

Mona Chollet, In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still On Trial

[petit-atelier-de-poesie]

Le bonheur amoureux est la preuve que le temps peut accueillir l’éternité.

Alain Badiou. Éloge de l’amour. 2009

Mona Chollet. Réinventer l’amour. Comment le patriarcat sabote les relations hétérosexuelles. 2021

[haggishlyhagging]

The inequality between the sexes on issues of age is both one of the easiest to spot and one of the hardest to challenge. We cannot make people find the signs of a woman's aging beautiful, you will be saying. At the time Sophie Fontanel was treating her Instagram followers to the slow whitening of her coiffure, I found myself stuck ruminating over one of the comments beneath the pics. It read, "Let's be honest here: this looks awful." (Fontanel is smart enough to know that aggressive comments say more about those who write them, about their self-hatred, than about their objects.) How can we be so oblivious to our conditioning, to the prejudice and the long history of imagery that shapes our gaze and forges our ideas of what is beautiful and what is ugly? Those anonymous trolls who harass feminists on Twitter often say the latter are "ugly." "All rebels are 'ugly,'" according to David Le Breton's analysis. And the American philosopher Mary Daly has observed that "the beauty of strong, creative women is 'ugly' by misogynistic standards of 'beauty.'" To age is to lose your fertility, your seductive powers and your role as the care provider for a husband and children—at least according to the dominant criteria; it makes you a rebel, however unintentionally. To age is to awaken the fear that a woman always inspires when she exists "not only to create and nurture others but to create and nurture her Self," as Cynthia Rich writes. The aging female body acts like "a clear reminder that women have a self that exists not only for others." Given these conditions, how could this body not appear ugly?

-Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women are Still on Trial

[wat--son]

"J'aime cette idée d'avoir la solitude pour état premier , de garder une base arrière , d'être avec l'autre pour quelques jours, parce que je l'ai choisi, parce que nous le désirons tous les deux (...).

Dans beaucoup de couples qui cohabitent, chacun se réjouit des absences de l'autre , parce qu'elles sont l'occasion d'une orgie de liberté et de tranquillité. C'est un peu triste , et cela dit bien le manque de solitude dévorante qui constitue leur ordinaire. Il me semble aussi que le fait d'avoir un territoire personnel matérialise l'espace mental intérieur, la place que l'on s'accorde.

Cela évite les guerres qui peuvent se livrer de façon plus ou moins sourde dans les logements communs pour déterminer, par exemple, qui occupera le seul bureau disponible."

Mona chollet, réinventer l'amour

[mschocolateworld]

Ktoś może mi zarzucić, że ja też proponuję bardzo konwencjonalny ideał "miłości na zawsze". I jest to prawdą. Chodzi o dążność uważaną na ogół za romantyczną, naiwną, nierealistyczną i typowo kobiecą - co więcej, o ideał zdecydowanie monogamiczny, podczas gdy dziś coraz częściej słyszymy, że to nierozsądne oczekiwać wszystkiego tylko od jednej osoby. Lecz dla mnie smak miłości wiąże się nierozerwalnie z faktem przyznania komuś uprzywilejowanego miejsca i zajęcia podobnego miejsca w jego życiu, wyróżnienia drugiej osoby i bycia wyróżnionym przez nią, tak iż poliamoria przekracza po prostu moje zdolności rozumienia. Jeśli chodzi o otwarte związki, mam wrażenie, że wymagają ogromnej wiary w siebie; podziwiam te i tych, którym się to udaje

Mona Chollet