Every Woman 20 Years Older Than You Who You Admire Had To Sit On The Floor Of Her Bathroom And Wail More

i’m going thru big trauma hours and reading your compiled research has been very cathartic and oddly healing in a way. i was just wondering if you had recommendations for writing with more trauma-focused/interpretation of Medusa or other horror ish, female-focused works?

i hope whatever you’re going through eases soon. here are some things i hope might help. 

What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness? or: The Monstrous Beauty of Medusa, Jess Zimmerman

Transforming Medusa, Charlotte Currie

Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain, Leslie Jamison

Nightingale: A Gloss, Paisley Rekdal

The Thread: Forged in Fire, Marissa Korbel

The Thread: Volcanoes, Marissa Korbel

The Girls Who Turned into Trees, Miranda Schmidt

There Is No Way Out of Here: Trauma and Transformation, Andrea Applebee

Make Me a Cold and Pitiless Goddess, Sharma Shields

Xenomorph, Sara Eliza Johnson

The Resurgence of the Monstrous Feminine, Hannah Williams

Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies, Brooke Bolander

Embrace Your Monstrous Flesh: On Women’s Bodies in Horror, Rebecca Harkins-Cross

Horror Lives in the Body, Megan Pillow Davis

Hero Status: Medusa, Hazel Cills

Medusa Writes for Teen Vogue, Dorothy McGinnis

Snake Eyes: The Power to Turn the Patriarchy into Stone, McKenzie Schwark

The Timeless Myth of Medusa, a Rape Victim Turned Into a Monster, Christobel Hastings

OUROBORICISMS, Alice Lesperance 

On the Haunted Lives of Girls and Women, Rachel Eve Moulton

Prey, Kathleen Hale

Medusa Reflects, Jacqueline Doyle

you’ve given me a very broad topic and thus i have tried to give you a wide range of things to read. some of these don’t exactly fit what you requested, but since they helped me, i hope they might help you too. i’m always available if you want more. i hope you find your healing soon, angel 💖

what do you think drives lady macbeth's cruelty and do you sympathise with her at all?

This post and this post might be of interest. But I think ‘cruelty’ is the wrong word. Cruelty implies violence for the sake of violence and enjoyment of violence. (See here.) Lady M doesn’t revel in the violence. She doesn’t delight in it the way some of the characters in, say, Titus Andronicus do, or even Margaret in Henry VI does after the murder of Rutland/during the murder of York. For Lady M violence is always a means to an end. “Infirm of purpose” is what she calls her husband when he starts to get faint-hearted. He’s too full of the milk of human kindness “to catch the nearest way.” For her, it’s all about the outcome. The ends justify the means. Like I said in one of those posts, I think her driving force is ambition. She wants more than what she has. 

Interestingly, she never expresses any personal desire to be queen. She does, however, use the singular possessive pronoun ‘my’ when she says “The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements.” She claims the crime as her own, and even though the idea of murder occurs to her and her husband independently, she is the criminal mastermind. She says, “you shall put / This night’s great business into my dispatch; / Which shall to all our nights and days to come / Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.” And at the end of the scene: “Leave all the rest to me.” This regicide is her baby–and I use that word very deliberately. There are a million possible explanations for why Lady Macbeth is so desperate to seize this power for her husband. My guess is it has something to do with that baby she mentions in 1.7 which doesn’t appear in the play. A woman’s function at this point in history was basically to be a baby-making machine and ensure the survival of her husband’s line. She hasn’t been able to do that (for whatever reason) and her husband, at least, is already middle-aged, so that procreation window is rapidly closing, if it’s not closed already. By early modern standards, that’s a huge dynastic failure. My guess is that her power-grabbing is about agency and compensation. Maybe she can’t continue Macbeth’s line, but she can make him king. And she does. 

But here’s the other part of it which I think is really important and often gets overlooked, and it goes back to the fact that Lady M never expresses a personal desire to be queen. She wants her husband to be king, and she thinks he is fully deserving of that office. “Thou wouldst be great;” she says, “Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it.” AND THIS IS SO KEY. Because Lady M is nothing if not full of ambition. What she’s saying here is “You don’t have enough darkness in your soul to do this, so I’m going to do it for you.” Now. Is that somewhat fucked up? Absolutely. However, that is an enormous sacrifice to make. I’m not going to get into this in depth, but there’s a lot of natural law theory floating around in this play. What’s important to know is this: In the protestant ethos of this play, if you commit regicide, you are 100% going to be damned for eternity. There’s no doubt about that. So, in an insane backwards way, this is actually an incredibly loving, selfless thing to do on Lady M’s part. She is willing to sacrifice her own salvation to make her husband king. Let that sink in. That is so much more hardcore than just saying, “I’d take a bullet for you, babe.” She is willing to burn for all time to put him on the throne, and not only is she willing, but it’s her idea, not just something she does with her back against the wall. That is a crazy kind of love. And that’s one of my favorite things about this play. This is not a unanimous opinion by any means, but I firmly believe that even though the Macbeths are terrible tyrannical people, they are desperately, devotedly in love with one another. Their language is incredibly intimate. In his first letter Macbeth addresses his wife as “My dearest partner of greatness,” and throughout the play they are constantly struggling to help and heal one another. Theirs is a relationship built on love and equality, whatever else they do (and however their relationship is also sometimes toxic and fractures through the play). Look at Macbeth’s conversation with the doctor in 5.3 when his wife’s health begins to fail: “If thou couldst, doctor, cast / The water of my land, find her disease, / And purge it to a sound and pristine health, / I would applaud thee to the very echo, / That should applaud again.” That. Is. Love.

So. Why does Lady Macbeth do the terrible things she does? There’s no certain answer. Ambition has a lot to do with it. But I think that ambition is rooted in guilt about what she hasn’t been able to provide her husband with, and a passionate yearning to make up for that, somehow. Leo’s character says in Inception that positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time, and I think that’s true here. Lady M doesn’t orchestrate Duncan’s murder because she’s inherently cruel. She does it for love.

Halsey, “I would leave me if I could” / Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” / Kiran Desai, “The Inheritance of Loss” / Mary Ruefle, “Woodtangle” / Opie, “The Angry Father” / Josephin August, “Half a Woman” / Catherine Lacey, “Cut” / Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” / Rupi Kaur, “Milk and Honey” / Henry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle” / Dick Lourie, “How do we forgive our fathers?”

ARTICLES I READ THIS WEEK AND ENJOYED, BY GENRE.

— feminism and race.

atlanta spa shootings: how we talk about violence by holly honderich

does your daughter know it’s ok to be angry? by sorya chemaly

hunting the men who kill women: mexico’s femicide detective by meaghan beatley

my mum was born into one of ireland’s mother and baby homes – this is why everyone should know her story by molly mulready 

pm, are you listening? here are our stories. hear us roar (tw for rape, sexual assault)

red river women by joanna jolly (tw for murder and violence against indigenous women) 

the grooming gap: what “looking the part” costs women by mindy isser

when did recipe writing get so… whitewashed? by priya krishna (with yewande komolafe)

women’s suffrage and the democratic peace by joslyn n. barnhart, robert f. trager, elizabeth n. saunders, and allan dafoe 

— fine arts.

a brief history of death by nir baram

a rainy day with ruskin bond by mayank austen soofi

arthur rimbaud: the aesthetics of intoxication by enid rhodes peschel

crying in h mart by michelle zauner

eleven by sandra cisneros

nick cave’s letter to a fan grieving their loved ones

sadako and the thousand paper cranes by eleanor coerr

sunflower sick by sara heise graybeal

— history and science.

cricket and politics in colonial india by ramachandra guha

scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain by yudhijit banerjee

the cosmos from the wheelchair (the economist obituaries)

the death of the department store and a dwindling middle class by jason pallant, sean sands

the gruesome history of eating corpses as medicine by maria dolan

— politics:

amazon has transformed the geography of wealth and power by vauhini vara

caste and politics: identity over system by dipankar gupta

implicit bias against asians increased after trump’s secretary of state and others popularized “chinese virus” by eric w. dolan

making pledges was the easy part but it’s a long road to net-zero emissions by angel hsu

note: some of the articles are behind paywalls, but can be read for free with outline.

“This new focus on the more real, intimate side of girlhood has been largely rewarded by viewers and corporate partners alike. But what makes young women in particular so poised to take up this conversation, and ultimately profit from the interest of their (largely female) audience? For one, demonstrating high levels of personal and emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for being an idealized vision of a successful young woman. Many of these emerging trends in pop culture — yes, even in niche YouTube videos — indicate society’s intense interest in women developing a heightened awareness of the self. Feminist theory has long held that women practice self-surveillance (and therefore self-discipline) because of the immense pressures they face. From the expectation that girls know their specific body “type” (curvy on top! petite! pear-shaped!) to find the ideal jeans fit, to the myriad wellness and self-help circuits that focus on turning inward to find healing, to the health and diet fads that are rooted in self-diagnosis and self-treatment, girls and women are believed to find success through knowing and monitoring themselves intensely. The question is, if more and more gurus are turning inward, seemingly more interested in taking care of the self, then how do they continue to encourage other people to buy products that are largely focused on outward appearance? That’s where their established position as beauty experts comes into play. Buying products is one thing — but buying the right products signifies self-knowledge and the ability to care for oneself. Retail spending is blended with political and social freedom, something girls’ studies scholar Anita Harris calls a “linking of neoliberal ideologies about individual choice with a distorted kind of feminism.” Girls’ ability to make purchases is often seen as empowering, in its display of personal wealth amassed and its demonstration of knowing oneself best. The young women on YouTube have deftly manipulated this ethic to their advantage. There are only so many videos one can make about eyeshadow palettes or bubble bath before finding a new narrative through which to talk about them.”

— How YouTubers Like Zoella Capitalize On The Self-Care Movement (via thecrownedgoddess)

[ID: excerpt from The gender of sound, Anne Carson

“Putting a door on the female mouth as been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.”

poetry line by Meggie Royer @writingsforwinter

“A woman’s first blood doesn’t come from between her legs but from biting her tongue.”

excerpt from Hunger makes me, Jess Zimmerman

“The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.”

excerpt from The unruly woman: Gender & the genres of laughter, Kathleen Rowe

“…voices in any culture that are not meant to be heard are perceived as loud when they do speak, regardless of their decibel level.”] 💔

LAST ONE BORN IS NORMAL IS HAPPY IS FREE WINS

hasan minhaj, homecoming king / sing street (2016 + 2022) / little women (2019) / @/feefal_ on twitter / ferris bueller's day off (1986) / beef (2023) / the banshees of inisherin (2022) / jackie kay, "got you" / beth ann fennelly, "two sisters, one thinner, one better dressed" / michael torres, "my brother is asking for stamps" / the king of staten island (2020) / maggie stiefvater, the dream thieves / chelsea martin, "mcdonalds is impossible" / jonathan goldstein, ladies and gentlemen, the Bible!

sorry to chime in but thought i’d bring up ada limón’s someplace like montana where she also calls her friend by the name - not as blatantly about friendship, but it is about making plans/dreams with friends even if you end up in different paths. one of my favourite poems ever <3

YES i love this poem too!!! the ending especially made me go ! the first time i read it. to paraphrase ada limón i love the way people love <3

Do you have something on Platonic love?

well, there’s definitely elements of it in the love tag, but i haven’t really differentiated between romantic and platonic in the tag system. concepts like love as attention etc aren’t strictly defined as either imo & also, it definitely depends on the context of the specific text/the author i feel..? it’s all tangled up and complex!

anyway, there’s this one which just came across my dash 😳 i think it fits this theme well! and this platonic love quotes by @4400lux​ is an absolute gem 💓

& here’s a couple from the friendship tag 

this one! / two / three (this one has i’d say the strongest focus on the ‘all friendship is romantic’ slant) / to sit in hell with you / the heartbreak of friendship

a lot of these themes come up in a few of the above but it depends on what type of relationship you’re considering? they’re all forms of platonic love but perhaps there’s different trappings to them like: 

the mothers tag / other familial love which. i don’t think i have tags for currently oops...

there’s also the whole ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’ angle, love for found/chosen family! !! there’s quotes in some of the above links :’) 

love for humanity! for yourself !! for strangers (this compilation!!) just the inherent connection... the love we all send out to the world 🥺 

love for nature!! for being alive!! would highly recommend mary oliver’s poetry for this... and the love for your pets, again off the top of my head, would rec ‘dog songs’ by mary oliver, it’s very sweet 

& have a couple of other quotes n stuff! 

this tenderness photoset by wing shya about brotherhood 

this very sweet story about kafka and the doll traveler (or tumblr post here) !! “Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.

- ray bradbury

The other element of friendship is tenderness.

- ralph waldo emerson 

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. 

- c.s. lewis

For me, friendship has always been the most accessible of relationships — certainly far more so than romantic love. Friendship, I learned, provided a buffer in the interplay of emotions, a distance that made the risk of intimacy bearable, a space that allowed the other person to remain safely another person. (...) You can tell how strong the friendship is by the silence that envelops it. Lovers and spouses may talk frequently about their “relationship,” but friends tend to let their regard for one another speak for itself or let others point it out.

- andrew sullivan

...the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

- david whyte

“But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love – all love – love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe.” 

- jeanette winterson 

ok these are, for the most part, friendship focussed but going to stop now otherwise this post would be wildly long aha but i hope this helps! 💓