#the husband stitch

[coochiequeens]

Men ask why women don’t want to have kids then think making crass comments about new mothers they don’t even know “is a very normal joke”.

This post was disgusting but then someone posted

Ladies if you do have kids make sure your doctor knows you do not consent to the husband stitch

And make sure you get a doctor who will listen to your pain

[whatsnewalycat]

Forever thinking about the short story “The Husband Stitch” from Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.

Thinking about bodily autonomy in romantic and sexual relationships, especially with men. Thinking about the expectation of martyrdom in womanhood. How complete servitude is the status quo. How women give and give until we’re empty and that’s considered a job well done. How much it hurts that women have to fight to keep the scraps of humanity we’re able to acquire.

Thinking about:

“A wife,” he says, “should have no secrets from her husband.”

“I don't have any secrets,” I tell him.

“The ribbon.”

“The ribbon is not a secret; it's just mine.”

Thinking about:

Resolve runs out of me. I touch the ribbon. I look at the face of my husband, the beginning and end of his desires all etched there. He is not a bad man, and that, I realize suddenly, is the root of my hurt. He is not a bad man at all. To describe him as evil or wicked or corrupted would do a deep disservice to him. And yet—

“Do you want to untie the ribbon?” I ask him. “After these many years, is that what you want of me?”

His face flashes gaily, and then greedily, and he runs his hand up my bare breast and to my bow.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

“Then,” I say, “do what you want.”

[antediluvianapocalypse]

After all, stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle.

[vvaerae]

"I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanitarium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly that they take you away from the known world for wanting it?"

The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado

[sallysetoncore]

the gothic horror of the Kripke Era of Supernatural // The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado

Stories have this way of running together like raindrops in a pond. They are each borne from the clouds separately, but once they have come together, there is no way to tell them apart.

[nat-r-f]

“The ribbon is not a secret; it’s just mine.”

[palabasa]

"When I select my wedding gown, I am reminded of the story of the young woman who wished to go to a dance with her lover, but could not afford a dress. She purchased a lovely white frock from a secondhand shop, and then later fell ill and passed from this earth. The coroner who performed her autopsy discovered she had died from exposure to embalming fluid. It turned out that an unscrupulous undertaker’s assistant had stolen the dress from the corpse of a bride.

The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you. Or perhaps the moral is that brides never fare well in stories, and one should avoid either being a bride, or being in a story. After all, stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle."

― Carmen Maria Machado, The Husband Stitch

[diversifyyourliterature]

Carmen Maria Machado

From her website:

"Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.""

The first piece I read of Carmen Maria Machado was "The Husband Stitch" from her collection Her Body and Other Parties. It was beautiful, and it was heartbreaking. Machado has a way with words that leaves you transfixed and makes you feel seen.

Her website -which is gorgeous and a delight to explore- has links to her published works and where to buy them, but also many different online pieces that you can explore and read. I'm almost finished with her list of short stories now (I just finished "The Old Women Who Were Skinned" and oh my goddddd y'all I got chills!) and highly recommend them!

Her writings range from horror to fantasy, to magical realism, and do explore darker topics, so I recommend just approaching with that in mind as you explore her works.

[el-im]

[djungelskogbear]

Did not expect to find such a profound paragraph in an analysing essay of “The husband stitch”

[fictionz]

New Horror 2022 - Day 16

"The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado (2014) "You shouldn’t touch it, I say. You can’t touch it."

Not long ago, while waiting at a bus stop, I found Her Body and Other Stories sitting on a concrete retaining wall. The area was dirty and littered with an empty bag from a bagel shop, a discarded pizza box, dried old crusts. I assumed someone had stopped there to read and then ate and left their trash along with the book they’d just finished. Part of me thought I should take the book, save it from decay. I saw that it was labeled with a library sticker from over in the next county. When my bus arrived, I thought best to leave it there for someone else to save, but made a note to get an ebook copy for myself. The next time I was at that bus stop, the book was gone. All of which is to say, fuck. 

===

"Some Other Animal's Meat" by Emily Carroll (2016) "What if inside, it's somehow the wrong stuff?"

Some inside part is always going to feel like it’s different from yours.

===

Deadstream dir. Vanessa Winter & Joseph Winter (2022) "I don't want to be remembered as a douchebag."

Sort of fun? But knowing how shitty some cult-of-personality streamers can be makes it less amusing to me. Then I wonder how much of what I see in past movies is amusing to me as someone who didn’t live through those times but is not funny in the least to someone who was there for it. Ultimately, this is another kinda horror movie that’s not for me.

[torschlusspanikattack]

Stayed up reading the Husband Stitch instead of sleeping before my trip—it was good, which seems obvious, though it’s in a strong litfic style—too erotic for my taste, too many unbidden sensations—awful, invasive, violating—as a vehicle for emotion it is rich and effective—however, I think it’s political implications are, imperfect? to even think this feels like missing the point somehow, and I can feel the text accusing me of this yet obviously it must bc of its praise of intuition—I think this is a clash of worldviews—I am often accused of negativity, pessimism or cynicism but I think I am an idealist of sorts at heart—so much of the bleakness is knowing there is a better world out there in the realm of possibilities, but out of reach of the flawed people that exist here and now—the text was crushing though, it was such a small world and a miserable one and one that was without escape—the setting felt Mexican—I don’t know the author’s background—I cannot tell if this is a thing of my own or the text, but it is more fleeting than I expected from other readers—the aesthetic experience is already fading as I write this

it is time—I must catch my flight now

[captainfantasticalright]

My grandmother gifted me this cross-stitched Good Omens work and I 🥹

The little Beelzebub fly is so cool!

[tickety-boo-af]

My first Good Omens embroidery, made as a Christmas gift.

[indigo-stars]

my latest embroidery piece!! this one’s a christmas present :)

[bestfurryhusband]