Caleb Zimmer > Recent Status Updates

This is an apology to all women. I’m sorry for not finishing this book during the month of March like I said I would. I’m a fourth of the way through, and I still have 30 hours of listening to go 😳 I shall endeavor to make haste 🫡🫡🫡

Fellas, she has clocked our tea 😧

I have lots of thoughts but mostly just suffice it to say that my freaking mind is expanding. As a man, I had never imagined how entirely different that existence itself is for women, as compared to men. And that last part “as compared to men” (by men, btw) encompasses the preeminente flaw that have set the conditions which women have endured. De Beauvoir has surprised me by my own contrived perceptions of women.

You guys this shit is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD 🤯🤯🤯

Women have been uniquely given the task of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. These tasks do not bring her agency or renown, but are seen by society as her due diligence. Man has taken to shaping the world in their image, while woman has raised man’s likeness over and over again.

I think that de Beauvoir would be happy to see the permanent shaping that women have contributed to a world that is dominated by men.

Ch. 3 cont: Engels also theorized about the plight of women. His ideas of sexual and gender inequality ran parallel to his theories on class struggle. Although women are unequally affected by the oppression of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat, women cannot be defined or thought of in terms of class. For one, they seek no dissolution of womanhood. Also, women’s bodies and functions are not just means of labor.

Chapter 3 notes:
Woman’s inferior treatment has been theorized by Freud and Engels. Freud said some bullshit about how women are mad deep down because they aren’t men. This is a load of shite, because his entire claim revolves around value judgements. It is due to Patriarchy that a woman would perceive male characteristics as superior to female, not nature or innate biological programming.

Ngl chapter 7 was sort of a slog. HOWEVER… The last two pages or so were HEAT. I think that the structure of the chapter was to present contexts and supporting ideas for the thesis, which was stated finally. I’m looking forward to chapter 8!

At the time of this book’s publication (2016), there were 2.5 incarcerated people in the USA. “According the Michelle Alexander, there are more black people incarcerated and directly under the control of correctional agencies… than there were enslaved in 1850.”

BRO this opened my eyes!! The prison industrial complex and the crime and punishment justice system MUST be abolished. 😤😤

Chapter 8 was my favorite chapter so far. It is also the chapter with which Angela has narrated with the most fervor. The truth that a feminist mindset allows us to see more truth is amazing. Feminism is arguably the most important of all critical perspectives, given that patriarchy, historically and to this day, is the most widespread form of oppression.

The inter-connectedness of struggles for freedom and justice have always been less neatly defined than I imagined. Efforts to free any group of people has perhaps always necessitated change on more than one level. In this way, these movements do not solely confront racism, sexism, or other systems of oppression by themselves. Their struggles are shared so that they support each other, and this is necessary.

I’m starting to feel like this book is a cautionary tale about how nobody should ever be trusted 😭

I hate this mfer

“How would you explain the popularity of this narrative: that the oppressed have to ensure the safety of their oppressors?”

Roskolnikoff pulls a Count Dooku with the “What if I told you that the Republic was now under the control of a dark Lord of the Sith?” type-hint 🧐

Roskonikoff = D1 crash out 😳

It’s probably an audiobook

Does he know?? 🤨

Opened this up before bed tonight. The forward and introduction minced no words about the importance of Davis’s work. I’m excited for this!

RIP Dostoyevsky, you would’ve loved A24 films like Beau is Afraid 🤷‍♂️

Also, I have learned that totalitarian regimes are, in actuality, never the concrete structure of order and obedience that they project. They are always poorly managed, unclear, and scrambling to keep up (or contest) with the ever-worsening orders of their leader. Idiocy and totalitarianism are interlinked. The fact that Trump and his MAGA idiots are as stupid as they are only shows how dangerous they can become.

The final solution’s implementation was EXTREMELY dependent on local cooperation in Nazi-occupied areas. It is clear to me that the Trump administration has been trying to replicate Hitler’s rise to power in their own right. However, as long as the American people continue to resist in facilitating the violence toward their neighbors, Trump’s America will never rival Nazi Germany. They need our compliance.

I’m coming to understand evil as a product of complacent, jealous, and comically inadequate people’s attempts to make themselves feel important. MAGA stays at the front of my thoughts as I read this historical account of the Nazi management of power. At the current time, we are in no way immune from the evil that the third reich embodied. It lives through powerful people’s acts and our acceptance of them.

This book is HUGE. An hour of listening has yielded 4% progress. Suffice it to say that I’m intimidated by how freaking big this book is!
Because I’m a man and the experience of women is not firsthand to me, I often need to repeat sections of Simone’s more illustrated points in order to grasp them. I’m grateful for a place to start in understanding the lives of the people who are most important to me.