#women and other monsters

[readtilyoudie]

Being a teenage girl is dramatic in part because it’s your first, chilliest dunking in the certain knowledge that your body is your worth. I’d been a chubby kid, and so the idea that my body was a source of shame wasn’t new to me, but previously I’d only been a disappointment to my family. Now, I was understanding that an unbeautiful woman is an unfulfilled promise to the world.

I realize now that some of this is illusion—that those promises were made on my behalf, without my input, by people who didn’t have my best interests at heart.

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman

[berattelse]

Most cultures have a female monster who preys on pregnant women, fetuses, newborns, and children. It's a near-universal nightmare: the creature who rips babies from the womb or steals them from the cradle. her name is Abyzou, Penanggalan, Lamashtu, La Llorona. Her purpose is sometimes to scare children into compliance, but it's often to scare women into compliance as well. Only monsters stand in the way of the natural order: women as incubators, as conduits for birth. In ancient Greece, the baby stealer's name was Lamia. The myths agree on her name, and her role as a murderer of children, and that's about it. Her backstory and her appearance vary almost psychedelically from story to story. In some, she is a sea monster; her name is the ancient Greek for a rogue shark. In others, she is half-woman, half-snake -- or, as in Keats's poem "Lamia," a multicolored snake with a woman's mouth. In some, she is even plural: the Lamiae, a swarm of vampiric demons. She also appears in a seventeenth-century bestiary with a woman's face and breasts, a four-legged body, front paws, back hooves, scales, and a penis and testicles. Unlike so many of her sister monsters -- snake-haired Medusa, lion-bodied Sphinx -- the important feature of Lamia is not what she looks like, but what she does. The fear of the monstrous mother can have many faces, many forms.

Zimmerman, Jess. Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. Beacon Press, 2021.

[morgan--reads]

Summary: This collection of essays explores the experience of women through the lens of female monsters from Greek Mythology.

Quote: "Not every monster devours, but the drive to consume—to gobble up children, or swallow the sun, or eat young women’s hearts—is considered a monstrous trait. Outsize hunger is the province of the monster, and for women, all hungers are outsize.”

My rating: 3.5/5.0   Goodreads: 3.79/5.0

Review: In some ways this feels like internet feminism. Zimmerman draws broad conclusions from her own personal life, the Greek myths sometimes no more than an aesthetic prop for the point she’s making. They’re very well-written broad conclusions, though, and Zimmerman’s willingness to be vulnerable about her personal life lends them poignancy. If you go in accepting these more as personal essays than anything deeply engaging with Greek myth, they can be quite moving. 

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Author: Jess Zimmerman

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2021

Genres: nonfiction, feminism, mythology, history, memoir

Blurb: The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds - who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or not sexy enough - aren’t just outside the norm...they’re unnatural, monstrous. But maybe the traits we’ve been told make us dangerous and undesirable are actually our greatest strengths. Through fresh analysis of eleven female monsters - including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, and the Sphinx - Jess Zimmerman takes us on an illuminating feminist journey through mythology. She guides women and others to reexamine their relationships with traits like hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, teaching readers to embrace a new image of the female hero: one that looks a lot like a monster, with the agency and power to match. Often, women try to avoid the feeling of monstrousness, of being grotesquely alien, by tamping down those qualities that we’re told fall outside the bounds of natural femininity...but monsters also get to do what other female characters - damsels, love interests, and even most heroines - do not. Monsters get to be complete, unrestrained, and larger than life. Today, women are becoming increasingly aware of the ways rules and socially constructed expectations have diminished us. After seeing where compliance got us - harassed, shut out, and ruled by predators - women have never been more ready to become repellent, fearsome, and ravenous.

[roseeberries]

Jess Zimmerman, Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology.

[999999999inadream]

toby fox needs to add like a bit of narration in deltarune abt kris like "they themmed they/themily down the stheirs" cus i cant go on seeing them constantly get he/himmed in yt comment sections

[fromthestacks]

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman

[imaybe5tupid]

Falin in the Isle of Wa

ft Benichidori and Hien 👯‍♀️

Part 1 of my postcanon dyke drama cinematic universe

Part 2

[msfcatlover]

On a conscious level, I am aware this trope has deeply problematic implications. Primally, though, it fucks.

[sk-ench]

delicious in creeking!! 1/2 in a series

[Image Description: A drawing of Falin, Laios, Marcille and Izutsumi from Dungeon Meshi. They are all near or wading through a creek. Falin is the nearest figure, squatting and pointing to a bug on a blade of grass. She calls back excitedly to Laios, who is wading towards her through the creek. He shields his face from the sun while smiling and holding a container for keeping bugs. Marcille stands just inside the creek with her hands on her knees. She appears to be catching her breath. Izutsumi squats on the side of the creek, looking at a small fish in the water with wide eyes while flicking her tail. End Description.]

[readtilyoudie]

People look through your face, or past it, when there’s nothing there they want. They’re not afraid to meet your eyes—they just don’t see the point.

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman

[berattelse]

[...] The qualities we hail as heroic in Western culture -- courage and fortitude, selflessness and nobility, steadiness of mind and will -- are not unique to men. Arguably, they're not even characteristic. But in the male-dominated myth, folklore, and literature that defines our culture, they've been annexed as "masculine" traits. We're still struggling to create or consume stories about valorous women, unless they also display the "feminine" virtues: passive sex appeal and fragility that requires rescue. In a hero, these are flaws. Thus, any heroine who tries to embody both contains the seeds of her own undoing. The female hero can hoist up the shackles of femininity and take them with her on adventures, but that's not the same as breaking free. [...] In college, I was a particular fan of Edmund Spenser's "martial maid" Britomart, who gets to wear armor and carry a spear and go on quests and even rescue maidens -- but eventually, even Britomart gallops back to her role as a princess, a wife, and the mother of a race of noble Britons. Her whole mission, in general, has been to find the man she glimpsed in a magic mirror and fell in love with. The rescuing damsels part was just a side quest. [...] And if the heroine truly slips the constraints that her femininity is supposed to place on her, the very heroic virtues she embodies often mutate into monstrosity. In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, the eponymous male hero is described as an aglæca, a word for which we do not know the exact meaning but which is usually translated as something like "hero" or "warrior". Beowulf's antagonist, the monster Grendel, also gets described as an aglæca, which in his case is usually glossed as "demon" or "monster" or something similar. What the two have in common is the sense of being awe-inspiring or formidible, so that's probably more or less what aglæca means. But the word has a feminine form, aglæcwif, and the ancient text contains an aglæcwif too: Grendel's mother. There is no abiguity to this word, not in the way it's come down to us; aglæcwif is translated as "monster-woman," "troll-lady," "wretch," or "hag." In other contexts, "wif" (which is also attached to other descriptors of Grendel's mother) specifically denotes a human woman, and yet -- like it's not indignity enough that she's always called "Grendel's mother," as if the bards were Grendel's schoolmates who didn't realize mothers had names -- the aglæcwif is assumed to be subhuman and bestial. She's just as much an aglæca as Beowulf, and just as much a wif as the other human women to which that refers, but the combination inspires not awe but horror. The monstrousness of Grendel's mother, the factor that makes her a hag or a troll or a wretch, comes from her stepping outside the slim strictures of womanhood into the realm of aglæca, of formidability and awe. In another world, she would have been a hero.

Zimmerman, Jess. Introduction to Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. Beacon Press, 2021.

[moeblob]

I kinda maybe put a lot of my OC plot tag lines on a Wheel and gave it a spin so outta 79 options, it landed on "Cellphone Justice" which is... these two.

Matthew "Skittles" Mouse and Daisy Eddington

Partners in justice (of sorts). They're basically vigilantes and their orders are simply text messages. They don't really know who their bosses are but they do as they are told.

Skittles is a very mediocre guy. Doesn't stand out. The most color he has in his wardrobe is blue jeans. He's amazingly asexual and has zero interest in romance regardless of intimacy and yet he gets partnered with Daisy. The gayest lady he has ever met. Great start. She enjoys calling him fun little nicknames but seeing as they're monitored closely (via cell phones/technology) she is scolded and told to pick a single one. So she does. She dubs him Skittles. The candy as gay as her.

The one thing they have in common is their number one weakness: cute girls.

Daisy turns into a stuttering MESS of a human being. A disaster. At the mere sight of a cute girl. Skittles on the other hand is TERRIFIED of them. When asked, he simply blames his life growing up. Daisy doesn't really push the matter just thinks it's a little weird to be scared of every single cute girl (no offense to the not being afraid of her taken).

[sundybundy]

can i be real for 5 minutes I'm so sick of everyone acting like james is an incel sex pest but I'm also so sick of everyone pretending like he isn't a misogynist............ like I don't think he Hates women but there are lots of things in the game I can point to regarding his weird feelings about women

[dootznbootz]

I think some folks MAY have gotten the wrong idea about how I feel about Circe with some of my posts. So, to clear the air...

Homies, I love that fucked up sorceress.

I love how we're never given a reason why she turns people into animals. That's so funny and so awful. And another potion-making magic gal?!?! I love that she's just basically vibing on an island doing whatever she wants. I even love the fact that she scares Odysseus shitless! She's morally gray and that's why she's FUN.

I just sincerely hate when people try to girlboss her or have her be a victim of SA when she never was Looking at you, Miller. Especially when she was actually the one who coerced Odysseus in exchange for his men being transformed back into humans. And even then, while he was clearly afraid of her, (it's in the language of the Odyssey) she likely meant him no harm after a certain point. He just didn't know that.

Why does she need a reason to do awful things? Why can't she just be a goddess who does whatever she wants? That's the reason why I love her!!! She's fucked up!!! :D

I hate what the Telegony did to her as well! >:( You're telling me, this sorceress goddess, who makes potions (!!!) wouldn't have magic contraceptives??? Would WANT CHILDREN?!?! WITH THE PATHETIC WIFEMAN?! No. Fuck no. Eugammon of Cyrene, I have beef with you 🤬

Anyways!!! Understand all the "#anti circe" I have is simply Anti "Girlboss Circe" or the book. I genuinely think she's neat af as her morally gray, fucked up sorceress self and just get frustrated with...everything :'D

[daisies-on-a-cup]

i think will and chiyoh should hate each other forever. and i think chiyoh and bedelia should meet and make out. and i think chiyoh and beverly should sit in the same room together for a bit. and i think hannibal and will should chew glass.