I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

I've enjoyed many of Nora Ephron's rom-coms. However, I am clearly not the target audience for this book. She talks about many of her experiences and concerns as an older woman in Manhattan. She is concerned that as she has aged, her neck does not look good in the fancy dresses she likes to wear. Her life centers in New York where even a move of a few blocks can change the way life would live. She has "first world problems". There is some humor, but it is hard to relate to.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA

How do women burnout and get stressed? The author focus on women and their tendency to care for others at the expense of themselves. The "bikini-industrial complex" is discussed a negative influence that encourages women to achieve a certain body type that may be the most helpful. While shooting for the ideal body type is not necessarily helpful, getting exercise is helpful for reducing stress. The book presents much of the standard stress-reduction advice. The difference is the woman focus and concerns about the "patriarchy" being a negative influence on women.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

This is an early feminist essay. The discussions include topics which seem almost foreign to us, such as joint education for boys and girls. It advocates greater respect for women and less treating of them as appendages of men. It is a little longer than I expected and does go around a lot of topics regarding women's right.

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans

From Ada Lovelace to today, many women have been involved in the development of the internet. Early "computers" were women that did calculations. Later it was women that fed the programs to computers. In the age of the internet, women were very involved in hypertext and social networks. The book touches a few of the key areas of female involvement. The book inadvertently shows how insignificant the female achievements were. There were girl game companies, design houses and other companies that popped out for a bit, but flamed out before making a significant impact. On the academic side, Lovelace was ahead of her time, yet there were limited significant academic advancements. 

The story of hypertext is interesting. The hypertext of the world wide web is an inferior form that lacks many of the strengths of hypertext, yet it is what has caught on. We still deal with "dead links" due to the lack of two-way linkages. Perhaps we just had to have something that was more simple to serve as the base for something broader. Is this part of the challenge of female involvement? Some of the companies like "women portals" had high-brow goals, but ended up going general. The women-centric ended up going out of favor in favor of the more general.

Poor Things

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Poor Things is mostly a narrative on the position of women in Victorian society, based on modern (er 1990s) mentality. It goes about it in in a complex way with multiple layers of framing and indirection. The narrative is initially a series of documents regarding some men and their experiments. There was a Frankenstein-type operation used to make the subservient woman. However, she ended up being unfaithful and falling for other men. There was another document from the woman, showing her point of view. She had grown to play an important role in medical society. There were later details opf real people and their roles in medicine and society. All of this complexity is used to serve to tell the story of Belle and her awakening and rising up in a society that attempts to subjugate her.

Butts: A Backstory

What is the "formal" name for the human rear end? Butt? Buttocks? Glutes? Butt seems to be the most common option for this important part of the body. There has been some theory that this is the secret part of homo-sapiens strength. They can run for long distances to catch 4-legged prey.

The book then launches into a post-colonial anti-racist view of how white culture views butts. Large and backsides were speculated as being related to reproductive ability. "Good" European females were expected to be slender, with the large anatomy of Africans in the circus sideshows. Victorian could put on complex outfits to appear bigger, but then they could take them off.

There are various tangential explorations. A quest for the "perfect" figure ended up empty. No woman had the exact measurements that were identified as ideal. Clothing sizing was initially created to make things easy for the military. Women's sizes branched out of those, with an almost guarantee that they will not be good fits for most people. (However, it does make it easy for the clothing manufacturers.) There are also "fit models" that come in to test new clothing. (They need to have enough shape, nut not too much.)  Buns of Steel popularized toned glutes. The Kardashians popularized curvy figures. (Ironically, they claim some "biracial" heritage from Armenian ancestry, despite that being the definition of "caucasian")  Large butts come in and out of style, with the black influence often driving their respectability. The book mentions whites criticizing blacks for doing "white things" and blacks criticizing whites for doing "black things". Yet when people come together, we do get some of the most innovation.

The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

How do women manage creativity and motherhood? The takeaway from this book is that they don't. The women covered seem more likely to get an abortion or enter enter into lesbian relationships than to take on motherhood. The focus is very narrowly on women that had lived through the late 20th feminist movement. It would be interesting to see women that have a greater diversity. Are there more cases where women have both willingly raised a family and been creative? Has it become easier or harder today?

Sporting Gender: The History, Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes

The title pretty much tells it all. This book is an exploration of transgender and intersex athletics by a transgender author. She has a very intimate knowledge of the topic and fills the books with many details and personal experiences. Alas, it often gets bogged down with too much detail and lacks a strong narrative.

One of the key points boils down to the question of why we segregate sport by gender. The author has some strong views that make a lot of sense. At younger ages and lower levels, it makes sense to let athletes compete with whatever group they identify. Prepubescents are fairly similar in ability. Older athletes may have some masculine advantage, but it likely is not significant enough to impact women's participation. At higher levels, the concept of "athletic gender" comes in to place. Testosterone levels are often a good way to judge appropriate "athletic gender". Many intersex athletes identify as female, yet have male testosterone levels and competitive ability. Allowing them to compete as female limits the ability of other females to compete. For transgender females, hormone therapy that brings them in to the female range is often accompanied by female levels of competitiveness.

The author has spent some time studying running times of athletes that had transitioned. She found that trans females typically see their times drop after transition. This drop often leaves their times in the same female age-based percentile as their previous male age-based percentile. Other sports may have different impacts. Trans females retain height advantages they had. They do typically lose muscle mass, but still may maintain some small advantages in strength-based sports.

While people are primarily concerned with transgender females competing as women, there are also transgender males that compete in sports. They have greater challenges to overcome, but have competed at some levels. The high school level has had some interesting cases. In Texas, transgender athletes are required to complete as their birth gender. This resulted in the case of a transgender male dominating the girls in wrestling. Connecticut had controversy from the opposite side as transgender females competed without going through hormonal transition and won. 

It is among the intersex that greatest controversy arises at the elite levels. In many cases, intersex athletes are at an athletic disadvantage. However, in some cases, they have both male and female features. They may be identified as female since birth, yet produce male levels of testosterone. There have been many attempts to ensure that they don't have an advantage. Visual tests, chromosome tests, required surgery and analysis of testosterone levels have all been used. The current state admits that this does discriminate, but that this allows others to compete. Those that have elevated hormones may compete as men.  

We are probably have some time to go before we have a balanced field where everybody is happy. There is a balance needed on allowing everybody to fairly compete. Testosterone levels seem like a good indicator. But what about other biological advantages? And what will happen if a trans female does succeed at the highest levels of sport?

Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders has been attributed to Daniel Defoe, the 18th century author of Robinson Crusoe. However, it was never published under his name. Instead, it was published as if it were a memoir of a woman with the pseudonym of Moll Flanders. She has quite the life. Her mother was a criminal, and she was raised as an orphan. She is married multiple times, has a large number of children, travels to the new world and back and gets involved with a criminal element. She realizes that men are often after marrying somebody with money, so she feigns being a wealthy heiress, but in the process, also plays hard to get, getting men to commit to marry her even if she does not have money. In one case, it turned out that both she and her husband were pretending to have great wealth. In another case, she married a man and then went off to join him in the new world. Once there, she met his mother. She later discovered that his mother was also her mother, and that they were half-siblings. She struggled to eventually find a way to break off the marriage without getting anybody in trouble. When joining up with the criminal element, she keeps telling herself she will shortly leave, but keeps with it until she is finally caught.

Moll Flanders is an independent woman a few years ahead of her time. She carves out her full independence while adhering to the restrictions placed on women during her time. Her life comes across as almost believable, yet filled with just enough hyperbole to push it over the edge.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God centers on the life of Janie Crawford, an African American woman who wanted to live her own life. She was raised by her grandmother Grandma, whoworked as a nanny for a white family. Janie did not realize that she herself has not white until she couldn't find herself in a picture of the kids playing. Even so, she did have some "white" features which would play a roll in her later life. Grandma had grown up as a slave and lived through the civil war. She longed to have the ability to sit on the porch and do nothing and desired that of her granddaughter. She wanted to make sure Janie was properly married off soon after she "Became a woman". Janie was soon married to her first husband. She had hoped to love him, but their relationship never grew. He wanted her to be able to work hard and help on the farm. One day while he was out another man appeared that showed ambition and wanted to treat her "right". She eventually left with him and went to a "negro city". This man would go to become the mayor and they would run the store and live the life of luxury. However, Janie missed that chance to talk with common folk. After her husband died, she met a younger man named "Teacake". They would eventually get married and spend some time living in the Everglades working as harvesting crew. This marriage was much more down to earth. They were respected working class and made friends with many people. During this phase, she encounters a "white black" lady who respects Janie because of her paler skin color and "whiter" features and talks down to the more crude darker skinned blacks like Teacake. Janie doesn't buy into this argument. One day a hurricane comes through. They ignore the warning signs, and then make a mad dash to flea the rising lake at the last minute. In the process a dog bites Teacake. This leads to him coming down with Rabies and going mad. He raises a gun to shoot Janie. She has another gun and ends up killing him. She is acquitted in the trial, with many of the black audience muttering that a black woman or a white can get away with anything.
The novel focuses on life in the black community in the post civil-war era. There is still the challenge of rising up from out of slavery. Many people were like grandma and just wanted the chance to finally sit around and be lazy on their own. There were the few with the drive to make something of their life. However, they had to fight the trap of becoming something like what they detested earlier. Janie's second husband was resented for his living the life "above" that of his fellow men. However, he did gain their sympathy when he bought an old mule and freed him to live out his last days on his own. With Teacake, Janie was able to live a life of independence. They were striving for their own goals, not necessarily to live like white men. They, did not expect anything to be given to them. They were also quick to make friends with other immigrants. While they were mostly lived in a "black" world, events would make them realize they were not truly equal. After the hurricane, Teacake was pressed into service to bury the dead. Only the whites would get proper coffins. When they were ill, they would seek a white doctor as the "best" option. Once accused of murder, Janie appeared before a white jury. Life was "separate but equal" except when it wasn't. Native Americans also make a brief appearance, only to be talked down by the population, but later proven to be right. This book does a great job in showing how people lived their lives as complicated racial relationships were evolving in the Untied States.