Our Shared Shelf discussion

I’ve been enjoying this books and although it’s fiction, I’ve been thinking about how it’s content relates to some of the non-fiction books we’ve read and the actual issue of gender equality in the real world. I found one passage particularly striking: “If you have a slave, that slave’s your property, you don’t want damage to come to it. However bad any man treated woman, he needs her in a fit condition to carry a child.”

This made me think back to Half the Sky, which this group read a while ago and which addressed how gender inequality affected women’s health. Women have been raped and tortured to the point that they can no longer carry a child and have permanent damage to their bowels, uterus, etc.

I thought this was an interesting passage to put in this book because it shows how, once power shifts, facts are forgotten and/or distorted on both ends to try to readjust the power structure. Mother Eve is rewriting Biblical scripture in an attempt to give women power, but UrbanDox is ignoring certain facts in order to restore power to men.

Anyways, anybody else want to share their thoughts on some interesting passages they’ve read or maybe some connections to previous books/real world experiences?

The topic I discussed above is addressed again at the end of the book and I copied the quote here because I think it adds an interesting dimension to what I said before: “it would have made no evolutionary sense for cultures to abort female babies on a large scale or fuck about with their reproductive organs.” The book justifies male genital mutilation under the premise that one male produces thousands more sperm than women produce eggs, causing a surplus of men. The same argument can not be said for women, which poses an interesting question: why have women been traditionally less valued than men? Any thoughts?

Jo wrote: "I’ve been enjoying this books and although it’s fiction, I’ve been thinking about how it’s content relates to some of the non-fiction books we’ve read and the actual issue of gender equality in the..."

That quote actually reminded me a lot from The Handmaid's tale, where Offred described the handmaids as walking wombs. In the TV show, we see mutilation being used as a punishment, but always in a way that doesn't damage their capacity to conceive. Or at least they think so, since genital mutilation can affect childbirth.

I haven't read Half the Sky, but maybe in that topic we can also think in Ferrante, in the complicated motherhood in her novels.
Or in History, given that everything in The Handmaid's Tale was taken from reality.

When I added the Power to my shelves, I saw that someone asked about it: "What would happen if an author wrote a book about men having the power to electrocute to death, women?", and another person answered "it would be under the history category"

I definitely saw parallels between the eventual fate of men in the Saudi Arabia area and the current state of women in Saudi Arabia. It made me think of Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening, and Manal Al-Sharif's struggles with driving and being a woman under Saudi law!

That is an interesting parallel Rachel and does raise the question Will all the progress we are making in equality act as a buffer to prevent these dystopian futures form taking root

Rachel wrote: "I definitely saw parallels between the eventual fate of men in the Saudi Arabia area and the current state of women in Saudi Arabia. It made me think of [book:Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awake..."

I saw some connections to this as well, at least as far as the complete control of a totalitarian regime and its use of fear to control half the population.