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The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism
This groundbreaking work on the psychological and political roots of terrorism by award-winning writer Robin Morgan is updated with her new introduction covering the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US. In a new afterword, "Letters from Ground Zero," Morgan offers her eyewitness account of the physical and emotional devastation caused by the assault on New York's World Trade Center and the global struggle in its aftermath. First published in 1989, The Demon Lover is now more timely than a personal journey as well as a landmark work of investigative journalism. Traveling to the Middle East refugee camps, she gathered the first interviews with Palestinian women about their lives as women, and re-encountered the core connection between patriarchal societies and the inevitability of terrorism. In her final chapter, "Beyond Terror," Morgan sets forth a compelling vision of hope for the future.
448 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1989
18 people are currently reading
506 people want to read
About the author
Robin Morgan
151 books109 followersAn award-winning poet, novelist, political theorist, feminist activist, journalist, editor, and best-selling author, Robin Morgan has published 20 books, including the now-classic anthologies
Sisterhood Is Powerful
(Random House, 1970) and
Sisterhood Is Global
(Doubleday, l984; updated edition, The Feminist Press, 1996); with the recent
Sisterhood Is Forever
(Washington Square Press, 2003). A leader in contemporary US feminism, she has also played an influential role internationally in the women’s movement for more than 25 years.
An invited speaker at every major university in North America, Morgan has traveled — as organizer, lecturer, journalist — across Europe, to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa; she has twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.
Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile (Doubleday, l987) and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults (Feminist Press, 1991); nonfiction Going Too Far (Random House, 1977), The Word of a Woman (Norton, 1992, 2nd ed. 1994), and The Anatomy of Freedom (Norton, 1994). Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit. Recent books include the poetry anthologies Upstairs in the Garden (1994) and A Hot January (both Norton), as well as the memoir Saturday's Child (Norton, 2000), and her best-selling nonfiction piece The Demon Lover - The Roots of Terrorism (Norton, 1989—2nd ed. with a new introduction and afterword (Washington Square Press, 2001). Her novel on the Inquisition — The Burning Time — was published in 2006 (Melville House), and Fighting Words A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right in 2006 (Nation Books).
As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she has co-founded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.
An invited speaker at every major university in North America, Morgan has traveled — as organizer, lecturer, journalist — across Europe, to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa; she has twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.
Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile (Doubleday, l987) and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults (Feminist Press, 1991); nonfiction Going Too Far (Random House, 1977), The Word of a Woman (Norton, 1992, 2nd ed. 1994), and The Anatomy of Freedom (Norton, 1994). Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit. Recent books include the poetry anthologies Upstairs in the Garden (1994) and A Hot January (both Norton), as well as the memoir Saturday's Child (Norton, 2000), and her best-selling nonfiction piece The Demon Lover - The Roots of Terrorism (Norton, 1989—2nd ed. with a new introduction and afterword (Washington Square Press, 2001). Her novel on the Inquisition — The Burning Time — was published in 2006 (Melville House), and Fighting Words A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right in 2006 (Nation Books).
As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she has co-founded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 28, 2015
A feminist perspective on global and domestic terror, this book is disturbing and relentless. Morgan, through literary theory, feminist psychology and political theory, argues that terror is a product of patriarchy. She looks at how masculinity has identified with power, death and destruction. Particularly, the perceived power in ending life. Morgan argues that real power involves giving and nurturing life, which she reveals not only through theory but through stories of third-world women who are surviving in the most extreme conditions.
Morgan spends time looking at revolution, and in addition to looking at regimes of violent revolution, critiques even highly regarded theorists that work in the realms of what is regarded as peaceful revolution. No stone is left unturned, as Morgan continually challenges entrenched systems of patriarchy and oppression.
There were many parts of this book that I had difficulty following, particularly because I’m not as familiar with literary and political theory. The ideas that she presented were also personally challenging as a male. However, this feels like such an important book, and I will undoubtedly return to it in the future, hopefully with a little more understanding.
Morgan spends time looking at revolution, and in addition to looking at regimes of violent revolution, critiques even highly regarded theorists that work in the realms of what is regarded as peaceful revolution. No stone is left unturned, as Morgan continually challenges entrenched systems of patriarchy and oppression.
There were many parts of this book that I had difficulty following, particularly because I’m not as familiar with literary and political theory. The ideas that she presented were also personally challenging as a male. However, this feels like such an important book, and I will undoubtedly return to it in the future, hopefully with a little more understanding.
Read
May 16, 2020may, 2020:
in the four years since i read this, i've become more sensitive to the modes of argument being made by certain radical feminists in the seventies & eighties -- even when they're arguing for the construction of gendered behaviour, their positions are biologically essentialist & robin morgan isn't an exception. i did some research & found that she's been aggressively hostile abt the inclusion of trans women in feminist & lesbian circles, and used horrifyingly transphobic language in her demands to exclude women from communities to which they belong.
i'd never gone back to this review, even though my personal position on this book & its author has changed with further reading & awareness -- a comment on it reminded me of its existence, and motivated me to remove the star rating & add this edit. this book had some value to me when i read it, but i can't in good conscience let my response stand as is, because i was blinkered by not being familiar enough with trans-exclusionary rhetoric to realise that her visions of community were very different to my own.
i wouldn't argue for people reading, or not reading, this book -- i think reading it with an awareness of how morgan has weaponised the values in it against other vulnerable members of the communities it argues for might reveal some of the weaknesses that weren't apparent to me on first reading, & therefore might be useful? but i also think there are many more feminist authors writing about community and myth-making and political violence in ways that incorporate trans & gender non-conforming identities, and their accounts are, for that reason, more nuanced, more sensitive to lived experience & more important. i don't regret having read this one, but i also don't regret having moved past it.
september, 2016:
this was a book i inherited from my mother, would never have read if she hadn't first experienced it a few decades earlier; for a book so utterly invested in a community of women sharing experiences, communicating with clarity and vulnerability, passing on their knowledge and investing in a politics of love and transformation, the inheritance from mother to daughter feels important and precious.
morgan's attribution of the death drive to masculinity & those that identify with it, and the libidinal, erotic drive to femininity & those that identify with it, has been a very useful dichotomy for me in terms of narrative and archetype; the hero is a figure who must self-destruct in order to retain ideological integrity and if he lives it is with a sense of compromise and impotence or the threat of becoming the tyrant that he supplanted. if this is the cultural norm, as it is in much of the fiction we consume, the myths we internalise, then we raise generations of men who conceptualise politics, and the world, as cycles of violence in which, to become singular, one must become a martyr.
the flip-side of this todestrieb is the feminine drive towards survival and a love for life, ecstasy in being rather than ecstasy found in oblivion. this is the way in which mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, women who exist in the peripheries of masculine politics and masculine conflict and yet are ultimately always its victims, find meaning, by investing themselves in other women, by making change happen in unpredictable shapes.
in the four years since i read this, i've become more sensitive to the modes of argument being made by certain radical feminists in the seventies & eighties -- even when they're arguing for the construction of gendered behaviour, their positions are biologically essentialist & robin morgan isn't an exception. i did some research & found that she's been aggressively hostile abt the inclusion of trans women in feminist & lesbian circles, and used horrifyingly transphobic language in her demands to exclude women from communities to which they belong.
i'd never gone back to this review, even though my personal position on this book & its author has changed with further reading & awareness -- a comment on it reminded me of its existence, and motivated me to remove the star rating & add this edit. this book had some value to me when i read it, but i can't in good conscience let my response stand as is, because i was blinkered by not being familiar enough with trans-exclusionary rhetoric to realise that her visions of community were very different to my own.
i wouldn't argue for people reading, or not reading, this book -- i think reading it with an awareness of how morgan has weaponised the values in it against other vulnerable members of the communities it argues for might reveal some of the weaknesses that weren't apparent to me on first reading, & therefore might be useful? but i also think there are many more feminist authors writing about community and myth-making and political violence in ways that incorporate trans & gender non-conforming identities, and their accounts are, for that reason, more nuanced, more sensitive to lived experience & more important. i don't regret having read this one, but i also don't regret having moved past it.
september, 2016:
this was a book i inherited from my mother, would never have read if she hadn't first experienced it a few decades earlier; for a book so utterly invested in a community of women sharing experiences, communicating with clarity and vulnerability, passing on their knowledge and investing in a politics of love and transformation, the inheritance from mother to daughter feels important and precious.
morgan's attribution of the death drive to masculinity & those that identify with it, and the libidinal, erotic drive to femininity & those that identify with it, has been a very useful dichotomy for me in terms of narrative and archetype; the hero is a figure who must self-destruct in order to retain ideological integrity and if he lives it is with a sense of compromise and impotence or the threat of becoming the tyrant that he supplanted. if this is the cultural norm, as it is in much of the fiction we consume, the myths we internalise, then we raise generations of men who conceptualise politics, and the world, as cycles of violence in which, to become singular, one must become a martyr.
the flip-side of this todestrieb is the feminine drive towards survival and a love for life, ecstasy in being rather than ecstasy found in oblivion. this is the way in which mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, women who exist in the peripheries of masculine politics and masculine conflict and yet are ultimately always its victims, find meaning, by investing themselves in other women, by making change happen in unpredictable shapes.
January 3, 2008
I hate the one sided nature of this feminist propaganda...the author devalues a woman's inherent strength by removing choice and continually marking her/us as prey for the masculine world. Last I checked I made my own decisions...no amount of skewed data will change this fact.I would not have made it past the first few pages of this book if it wasn't assigned reading.
February 12, 2008
Assigned as one of the final books for feminism and political theory way back in the spring of 2002, I finally got around to finishing the Demon Lover this past week, in a flurry of reading.
Morgan is at her best reporting rather than normative theorizing. Her reports from the West Bank are gripping and and important reminder of how voiceless so many women are.
Morgan's normative argument is that the Patriarchy itself is a terrorist paradigm and that all other "causes" are really derivative of the Patriarchy. It's a toxic culture she posits, in love with death rather than life. As she herself says, "this doesn't "prove" anything." Rather she just wants to elucidate the position and provide evidence. Morgan is an incredibly driven scholar and her multi-discipline historical analysis of the Patriarchy is impressive if ultimately unpersuasive.
But such is the allure and promise of the best feminist criticism, to be elucidating, to inspire debate without shouting about how damn right they are.
Morgan is at her best reporting rather than normative theorizing. Her reports from the West Bank are gripping and and important reminder of how voiceless so many women are.
Morgan's normative argument is that the Patriarchy itself is a terrorist paradigm and that all other "causes" are really derivative of the Patriarchy. It's a toxic culture she posits, in love with death rather than life. As she herself says, "this doesn't "prove" anything." Rather she just wants to elucidate the position and provide evidence. Morgan is an incredibly driven scholar and her multi-discipline historical analysis of the Patriarchy is impressive if ultimately unpersuasive.
But such is the allure and promise of the best feminist criticism, to be elucidating, to inspire debate without shouting about how damn right they are.
May 31, 2015
I was unable to finish because of the somersaults made and the liberties taken with facts. Not that they were ever 'wrong', but that were often written in such a way as to obscure broader patterns outside of the rigid frames of thinking necessary to reach the conclusions intended. I was reading it for a seminar series and met her soon after reading it. She's quite lovely and I enjoyed her participation on a panel, and it is quite difficult to separate the speaker from the writer, but the reliance on misdirection in order to make a point weakens the theoretical and activist tradition from within which and for which she writes.
February 25, 2008
This lady is crazy!
March 31, 2025
Given the subject matter, I thought the tone would be very different: serious, monotonous, with respect and care. I couldn't have been more wrong. The author repeatedly takes the liberty of expressing her emotions and impact on the very information she's working with. At times, it can be funny, not because it's a joke, but because of how terrible it is.
Me quedo con este fragmento:
1. Women notice a problem, compare notes about it, name it, decide to do something about it.
2. Women move from the daily resistance that informs their lives (hiding children from slave masters or armies, secreting food for their families in famine, writing protest letters, etc.) into a loose linkage of action with other women (parent groups, church affiliations, good works' associations, neighborhood action committees, market women's guilds, etc.). These are all voluntary. The groups are informal, fluidly structured, filled with a sense of hope and good will.
3. These groups urge, cajole, and guilt-trip ("nag") men to become involved: agribusiness is taking over the farm; the cor- ner needs a traffic light; a toxic-waste dump shouldn't gO in next door; this village needs a well. I would characterize this phase as "Please, Herman, come with me to the meeting. It's helpful. Honest, you'll like it."
4. The men finally become involved. The issue is now Important because it is no longer a
women's issue.' The men assume leadership. The women permit this because they are relieved that the men are now concerned and active at all, they know that the men will be Taken Seriously, and they know that the men won't return to future meetings if they're not the leaders.
5. Because men's time is valuable, the leadership positions can no longer be voluntary; the men must be salaried. Funds must therefore be raised. The women raise the money through more voluntarism (making and selling baskets, bake sales, etc.).
6. The men regard the women as tangential to the issue because the issue is now Political. (Tautologically, if it's a women's issue, it's not important; if it's an ımportant issue, it doesn't concern women.) Because of their self-serving myopic definition of women's issues, the men exclude the women as a political constituency. The men say that prior to this time, the group was ""masturbatory--merely talking to those already convinced.' Now, however, the men will build a real 'movement,' i.e., the men will confront other men.
7. A fatal shift in tone occurs- a slide from moral and spiritual/ integrity (now regarded as sentimental, idealistic, and womanly) into self-righteousness. If the previous activism was church- oriented, for example, the shift is likely to be from a spiritual basis to one of religious fanaticism. Fragmentation of the practical from the metaphysical occurs-with the former then being lost in materialist fundamentalism and the latter being lost in religious fundamentalism of various sorts.
8, The consequence of this fragmentation is the emergence of the *higher good fallacy, leading to an ends-justify-the-means attitude. As abstractions Proliferate, the original issues be forgotten entirely. Unease expressed by the women at this point is dismissed as conservatism, cowardice, are likely to liberalism, or divisiveness. Acceptance of this situation sepa- rates the girls (the tokens) from the women.
9. The combination of a circumscribed constituency, self-righteousness, and the concept of an abstract higher good introduces manhood as the real issue. Manhood identity now depends on waging the struggle. Rhetoric, "turf," tools and weapons, and uniforms become fetishes of that manhood identity, Frazer's concept of contagious magic to the savage mind, u se The result is a dead end: the shift from living for a cause.
..."
Me quedo con este fragmento:
1. Women notice a problem, compare notes about it, name it, decide to do something about it.
2. Women move from the daily resistance that informs their lives (hiding children from slave masters or armies, secreting food for their families in famine, writing protest letters, etc.) into a loose linkage of action with other women (parent groups, church affiliations, good works' associations, neighborhood action committees, market women's guilds, etc.). These are all voluntary. The groups are informal, fluidly structured, filled with a sense of hope and good will.
3. These groups urge, cajole, and guilt-trip ("nag") men to become involved: agribusiness is taking over the farm; the cor- ner needs a traffic light; a toxic-waste dump shouldn't gO in next door; this village needs a well. I would characterize this phase as "Please, Herman, come with me to the meeting. It's helpful. Honest, you'll like it."
4. The men finally become involved. The issue is now Important because it is no longer a
women's issue.' The men assume leadership. The women permit this because they are relieved that the men are now concerned and active at all, they know that the men will be Taken Seriously, and they know that the men won't return to future meetings if they're not the leaders.
5. Because men's time is valuable, the leadership positions can no longer be voluntary; the men must be salaried. Funds must therefore be raised. The women raise the money through more voluntarism (making and selling baskets, bake sales, etc.).
6. The men regard the women as tangential to the issue because the issue is now Political. (Tautologically, if it's a women's issue, it's not important; if it's an ımportant issue, it doesn't concern women.) Because of their self-serving myopic definition of women's issues, the men exclude the women as a political constituency. The men say that prior to this time, the group was ""masturbatory--merely talking to those already convinced.' Now, however, the men will build a real 'movement,' i.e., the men will confront other men.
7. A fatal shift in tone occurs- a slide from moral and spiritual/ integrity (now regarded as sentimental, idealistic, and womanly) into self-righteousness. If the previous activism was church- oriented, for example, the shift is likely to be from a spiritual basis to one of religious fanaticism. Fragmentation of the practical from the metaphysical occurs-with the former then being lost in materialist fundamentalism and the latter being lost in religious fundamentalism of various sorts.
8, The consequence of this fragmentation is the emergence of the *higher good fallacy, leading to an ends-justify-the-means attitude. As abstractions Proliferate, the original issues be forgotten entirely. Unease expressed by the women at this point is dismissed as conservatism, cowardice, are likely to liberalism, or divisiveness. Acceptance of this situation sepa- rates the girls (the tokens) from the women.
9. The combination of a circumscribed constituency, self-righteousness, and the concept of an abstract higher good introduces manhood as the real issue. Manhood identity now depends on waging the struggle. Rhetoric, "turf," tools and weapons, and uniforms become fetishes of that manhood identity, Frazer's concept of contagious magic to the savage mind, u se The result is a dead end: the shift from living for a cause.
..."
March 26, 2018
I felt overall this was a book I went between "am I wasting my time?" and "there are rich experiences worth reading", so I'd give it 2.5 stars...
First, briefly on the negative note. I think in particular the first 1/3 of the book is much more wrapped in the ideology (and like any book that has its main focus on any ideology, it runs into inconsistencies, statements that make you raise eyebrows, etc.). Maybe also, fast forward 30 years since the book is published, I feel like the original (and humane) goals turned more into power games/exchanged with mainstream attention instead (and hence makes me question how things evolved). Of course this point is independent of the book itself, but when someone makes any claim a while ago and you observe things went into a completely foreign direction, you naturally question.
Briefly on the positive note next. I think in particular Morgan's personal experiences and the way she shares them with you in her powerful language makes you enrich yourself later. I see in particular her stories with her own past and her emotional journey with Palestine women make you feel, and also think as a human. Also at times she makes some nontrivial arguments effectively, which helps you to enjoy the book more/question the thinking you're wrapped in yourself.
All in all, I'd say a book worth considering reading even if you struggle with some parts of it...
First, briefly on the negative note. I think in particular the first 1/3 of the book is much more wrapped in the ideology (and like any book that has its main focus on any ideology, it runs into inconsistencies, statements that make you raise eyebrows, etc.). Maybe also, fast forward 30 years since the book is published, I feel like the original (and humane) goals turned more into power games/exchanged with mainstream attention instead (and hence makes me question how things evolved). Of course this point is independent of the book itself, but when someone makes any claim a while ago and you observe things went into a completely foreign direction, you naturally question.
Briefly on the positive note next. I think in particular Morgan's personal experiences and the way she shares them with you in her powerful language makes you enrich yourself later. I see in particular her stories with her own past and her emotional journey with Palestine women make you feel, and also think as a human. Also at times she makes some nontrivial arguments effectively, which helps you to enjoy the book more/question the thinking you're wrapped in yourself.
All in all, I'd say a book worth considering reading even if you struggle with some parts of it...
May 16, 2024
While I understand the arguments being made, and it is very true women are terrorized in almost every context very regularly, this book does little to make any of what is being discussed clear or comprehensible. Too many things which are complicated, separate but similar, or not connected due to culture/history/structure are over simplified here or lumped into one thing which makes for more confusion. For example, the religions of the book (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) as we participate with them today are not the same as the socio/religious practices and beliefs of Ancient Egypt as the author states. It's not all just a repeated cycle of terrorism against women. Or rape as a tool of war is well documented, but it's used by religious and secular groups alike. It is not solely a tool of religion or religious fundamentalist groups. It is absolutely a means for controlling populations by terrorizing women and gaining access to children and should be stopped at all cost, but over simplifying the underlying reasons for it is less than helpful at best.
I don't think this book gets at the roots of terrorism so much as points out that misogyny exists and is systemic in cultures. Until this changes, women, but really any group which is less powerful than those empowered, will be subject to terror.
I don't think this book gets at the roots of terrorism so much as points out that misogyny exists and is systemic in cultures. Until this changes, women, but really any group which is less powerful than those empowered, will be subject to terror.
April 21, 2020
The first chapter was amazing. It concerns the common theme, "what is the definition of terrorism." The rest of the book is good but there are issues. She acknowledges that women don't always make their decisions because of men but then throughout the book she ignores that. She also acknowledges that men and women aren't necessarily biologically different from men. However she also seems to ignore that throughout the book.
As for her writing style, I enjoy it most of the time and then randomly throughout she'll jump into a vaguely stream of consciousness/conversationalist style that seems unnecessary.
I'd love if she would add a new introduction (she added a new one after 9/11, which is the edition I have) concerning events over the last 20 years.
All in all it's a good read but I think it could have used a little more editing and also maybe for her to get her ideas in order.
July 2, 2025
I ordered this book without doing any research in its subject matter mainly going on title alone. Once it arrives I was disappointed that it wasn't what I had hoped but ever the one to see a project through I took on the task of reading this book. It has taken me four months and many nightmares but at last I have finished it. I read this book with as much of an open mind as a male has I believe. My greatest takeaway after reading this book is the terrible brutality shown women. It was very hard to read . It reminded me of the feeling that I had when reading Uncle Tom's Cabin. It really amazes me how cruel males can be. Somethings listed within the pages of this book will be etched into my soul forever. The last chapter was my favorite and I believe most who have read this work in its entity will agree.
February 23, 2017
I was inspired to read this by the author's notes in one of Richard K. Morgan's books. I'm sorry that I didn't read it sooner. There's a lot of important stuff here about the origins of terrorism, and the toxic brand of modern masculinity that fosters it's creation.
September 18, 2017
I loved the first 3/4 of the book, but found the last quarter somewhat repetitive places.
January 30, 2024
Extraordinary book. When i read It in 1989 the subtitule was On the Sexuality of Terrorism
July 22, 2022
Robin Morgan says there's a world of difference between patriarchy’s 'power over' and equality’s 'power to.' A lover of language, she describes patriarchal man as a verb and woman as a noun. In a male-controlled system, the verb is prioritized, and the noun is slowly erased.
I played with this notion and recalled Eva Mae Brower of Saskatchewan. The unlucky wife of former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, Eva Mae Brower was the sharpener of his selfish ambitions. Dief was deaf to his wife's entreaties to have a child and so Brower concentrated her considerable talent on guiding her husband through parliament. Soon, well behind the scenes and along with Tommy Douglas, she angled to establish Universal Health Care in Canada. From the wings, she convinced Dief of the glory to be his if only he’d endorse this bill. Once it passed, Eva Mae Brower sank back into nounhood, unacknowledged by the Prime Minister, who, despite her grave illness, phoned her hospital beside to consult her five times a day. When Eva Mae died of cancer and was buried in an unmarked grave, Dief found the next female noun to polish his supremacy.
Morgan refers to Hitler's words, "the bigger the lie, the more believable it would be," and patriarchy's giant lie is to eroticize death, to eroticize martyrdom, and to eroticize grandiose legacies such as that through suffering here on earth, we'll earn merit an eternal reward. Other grandiose fabrications such as "Thou shalt find thyself through losing thy self" are still seasoned with hot sauce and swallowed by the readily hoodwinked.
How is patriarchy's con accomplished? Poet and scholar Adrienne Rich once named patriarchy's most effective tools. These are to ignore, minimize, caricature, distort, and trivialize. Morgan adds one more, namely, to compartmentalize or institutionalize disconnection. Patriarchy categorizes sex, color, race, nationality, gender, degrees of wealth, education, income, weight, height, etc. Morgan says categorization and disconnection are guaranteed through our silence. And silence is permission. The pressures to perform and to 'measure up' begin early.
Morgan writes about the primarily male hero mythologies still in vogue that distort rational thinking. The contrived messing with minds never ends. For example, the US air force admits to showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids.
I've read that inside every mind is a calm, cool critic whose job is to advance our highest evolution. If on the wrong track, the body and mind signal distress in all manner of ways, but if these alarms are persistently ignored, the pearls of truth are withdrawn, and degradation happens.
Morgan asks, 'How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic - a pervasive message affecting everything from US foreign policy to "camouflage chic" and glamorizing gangsta styles?" One military training song (with lewd gestures) goes: 'This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." Feminist scholars have exposed such phallocentric military disconnects for decades. But, bottom line, military machinery garners all manner of stock market dollars for those whose very children are hoodwinked all the way to the ‘Highway of Heroes.’
Morgan invites us to end the lie. She invites us to establish policies of joy and justice, here and now, each of us in our own unique ways, and states the hallmark of feminist thought and action is not in 'life everlasting' but equality now. She writes that if she had to characterize one quality of feminist thought, culture, and action, it would be the connectivity.
A final Mogan quote encourages us: "Your life is the one place you have to spend yourself fully …wild, generous and drastic, …and in that instant when you truly realize that your existence is a flaring nova, won't you want to have used up all the splendor that you are?"
Eleanor Cowan
I played with this notion and recalled Eva Mae Brower of Saskatchewan. The unlucky wife of former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, Eva Mae Brower was the sharpener of his selfish ambitions. Dief was deaf to his wife's entreaties to have a child and so Brower concentrated her considerable talent on guiding her husband through parliament. Soon, well behind the scenes and along with Tommy Douglas, she angled to establish Universal Health Care in Canada. From the wings, she convinced Dief of the glory to be his if only he’d endorse this bill. Once it passed, Eva Mae Brower sank back into nounhood, unacknowledged by the Prime Minister, who, despite her grave illness, phoned her hospital beside to consult her five times a day. When Eva Mae died of cancer and was buried in an unmarked grave, Dief found the next female noun to polish his supremacy.
Morgan refers to Hitler's words, "the bigger the lie, the more believable it would be," and patriarchy's giant lie is to eroticize death, to eroticize martyrdom, and to eroticize grandiose legacies such as that through suffering here on earth, we'll earn merit an eternal reward. Other grandiose fabrications such as "Thou shalt find thyself through losing thy self" are still seasoned with hot sauce and swallowed by the readily hoodwinked.
How is patriarchy's con accomplished? Poet and scholar Adrienne Rich once named patriarchy's most effective tools. These are to ignore, minimize, caricature, distort, and trivialize. Morgan adds one more, namely, to compartmentalize or institutionalize disconnection. Patriarchy categorizes sex, color, race, nationality, gender, degrees of wealth, education, income, weight, height, etc. Morgan says categorization and disconnection are guaranteed through our silence. And silence is permission. The pressures to perform and to 'measure up' begin early.
Morgan writes about the primarily male hero mythologies still in vogue that distort rational thinking. The contrived messing with minds never ends. For example, the US air force admits to showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids.
I've read that inside every mind is a calm, cool critic whose job is to advance our highest evolution. If on the wrong track, the body and mind signal distress in all manner of ways, but if these alarms are persistently ignored, the pearls of truth are withdrawn, and degradation happens.
Morgan asks, 'How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic - a pervasive message affecting everything from US foreign policy to "camouflage chic" and glamorizing gangsta styles?" One military training song (with lewd gestures) goes: 'This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." Feminist scholars have exposed such phallocentric military disconnects for decades. But, bottom line, military machinery garners all manner of stock market dollars for those whose very children are hoodwinked all the way to the ‘Highway of Heroes.’
Morgan invites us to end the lie. She invites us to establish policies of joy and justice, here and now, each of us in our own unique ways, and states the hallmark of feminist thought and action is not in 'life everlasting' but equality now. She writes that if she had to characterize one quality of feminist thought, culture, and action, it would be the connectivity.
A final Mogan quote encourages us: "Your life is the one place you have to spend yourself fully …wild, generous and drastic, …and in that instant when you truly realize that your existence is a flaring nova, won't you want to have used up all the splendor that you are?"
Eleanor Cowan
March 28, 2008
Robin Morgan has been getting slapped around lately because of her militant stance on Sister Unity, but one would expect an author to take such a pro-sister militant stance if said author published a book entitled Sisterhood is Global! (Exclamation mark Morgan's). This book is about the process of making violence sexual/sensual, desirable, even passionately sought out (this makes me think of the allure of Kissinger back in the sixties. Who illegally controlled Congress,the "President"and the white male media, illegally bombed Cambodia commencing the Cambodian Holocaust, and yet, the white corporate media still painted this unusually provocative picture of a sensual man surrounded by women, yet obviously homosexual...queer) Its an intense book with much to say about violence and Everyone's participation in it. Morgan believes the roots of this violence is to be perhaps found in sexuality, I can agree to an extent, I also think the roots of this violent patriarchal society can be found in Womyns real cooperation in the ritualized, systematic, habitual rape, torture and abuse of all Other sentient Beings...Read it if your ready to go a few steps deeper~
January 3, 2008
i bought this book because gloria steneim mentioned it in a talk i was at ... about 6 years ago. i've started 3 or 4 times . maybe i'll make it to the end now that i'm not forced to read similar things by profs. we'll see.
ok. i've finished. my thoughts are that, while this is an important book as it is one of the first exploring the links between violence against women and terrorism, it can be a tedious read. robin morgan is an unabashed second wave feminist and through out the book she takes a very second wave 'if women ran the world all our problems would be solved' view.
that said, reading this book is absolutely worth it if only for the chapter in which morgan recounts her experience interviewing women in palestinan refugee camps. this chapter is amazing and everyone should read it.
ok. i've finished. my thoughts are that, while this is an important book as it is one of the first exploring the links between violence against women and terrorism, it can be a tedious read. robin morgan is an unabashed second wave feminist and through out the book she takes a very second wave 'if women ran the world all our problems would be solved' view.
that said, reading this book is absolutely worth it if only for the chapter in which morgan recounts her experience interviewing women in palestinan refugee camps. this chapter is amazing and everyone should read it.
September 9, 2009
Excellent analysis of the women of the 60's who broke away from the sexist left men who regarded them as sex objects and domestic help. Morgan analysis the appeal of the men who were the radical left. She steps into the universe of women and not accepting male analysis as truth for a woman. I liked this book because she was not radical lesbian separatist as so many went that way and who hated men and blamed them for everything. She does reject the sexism of these men, but has not given up on the idea that there can be another way to work for the betterment all people. Her deep commitment to women especially the poor is inspiring.
February 29, 2016
A really interesting book, but it sort of diverges in purposes halfway through. Very interesting book and give you a lot to think about in terms of the underpinnings of terrorism and the sort of signal fires that let you know a society is in decline (hint, it's a roll back of women's rights and the glorification of violence).
June 22, 2016
This incredible treatise on the psychological & political roots of terrorism is vital reading for everyone interested in how this phenomenon has exploded (pun intended) in the world. Robin Morgan makes a clear connection between patriarchal societies and the inevitability of the resultant terrorism. She also describes the components that must be in place to make global change.
October 12, 2007
3 1/2 maybe -- I felt it was a bit padded, although some of the psychology was very interesting.
November 17, 2007
the beginning is all over the place, but her interviews and stories in the 2nd half really brought me to tears. Well-researched, too.
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