Final instalment of the books I’ve read in the past quarter is here, and she did pretty well in October, November and December, reading five books. Let’s get into it:
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Unaccounted for, I read a lot of feminist literature this quarter. October started with Invisible Women, which was full of stats and facts that I knew from the beginning would enrage me, but I think I needed that fuelling. I’ve been feeling as if I haven’t been angry enough for the right reasons, and so this definitely did the job. Although a difficult and heavy read, it was a really important one and I’m glad to have it checked off my to-read list. I needed a book full of substantial facts that give me real-life situations to look over, to see how every aspect of a woman’s life is disrupted by the lack of data for and around them, from and because of which they continue to be the ‘invisible’ sex.
I would quote the whole book if I could, because I don’t think there was a single page in there that didn’t provide hard-hitting facts with a side of much-understandable rage veiled as dark humour. Likewise, I was thoroughly impressed by the extensive research that went into it – so much so that around 150 pages at the end of the book are dedicated to references and annotations. Not that I needed proof to convince me of the injustices, but more so, I could tell others (mostly men) that there are real-life studies and research done on this, and that it should be taken seriously.
A few things I underlined whilst reading:
There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work. (Page 70)
A 2016 study from the University of Sussex played a series of cries to parents (twenty-five fathers and twenty-seven mothers) of three-month-old babies. They found that although babies’ cries aren’t differentiated by sex (sex-based pitch differences don’t occur until puberty), lower cries were perceived as male and higher cries perceived as female. They also found that when male parents were told that the lower-pitched cry belonged to a boy, they rated the baby as being in more discomfort than when the cry was labelled female. Instead of believing women when they say they’re in pain, we tend to label them as mad. And who can blame us? Bitches be crazy, as Plato famously said. Women are hysterical (hystera is the Greek word for womb), crazy, irrational and over-emotional. (Pages 224–225)
We no longer lock women up and cut out parts of their brains. Instead, we give women drugs: women are two and a half times more likely to be on antidepressants than men.
So why are more women being treated with antidepressants? Are women simply more ‘feeble-minded’? Does living in a world in which we don’t quite fit affect our mental health? Or are antidepressants the new (and obviously preferable) lobotomy for women dealing with trauma? (Page 226)
There is an irony in how the female body is apparently invisible when it comes to collecting data, because when it comes to the second trend that defines women’s lives, the visibility of the female body is key. The trend is male sexual violence towards women – how we don’t measure it, don’t design our world to account for it, and in so doing, allow it to limit women’s liberty. Female biology is not the reason women are raped. It is not the reason women are intimidated and violated as they navigate public spaces. This happens not because of sex, but because of gender: the social meanings we have imposed on male and female bodies. In order for gender to work, it must be obvious which bodies elicit which treatment. And clearly, it is: as we’ve seen, ‘the mere sight of a woman’ is enough for the viewer to ‘immediately elicit a specific set of associated traits and attributions’. To immediately class her as someone to speak over. Someone to cat-call. Someone to follow. Someone to rape. Or maybe just someone to make the tea. (Page 313)
And, as with male violence against women, female biology is not the reason women are the bum-wiping class. But recognising a child as female is the reason we will be brought up to expect and accept that as her role. Recognising a woman as female is the reason she will be seen as the appropriate person to clear up after everyone in the office, to write the Christmas and birthday cards to her husband’s family, and look after them when they get sick – to be paid less, to go part-time when they have kids. (Page 314)
From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough
I don’t think I necessarily took much away from this book. It was a very quick read, and in the audiobook version, there were extracts from recordings which Lisa Marie Presley left for her daughter, which I thought made for an interesting addition and layer. I enjoyed reading about the extravagant lives they lived and the details about rooms and people coming in and out of their house when Elvis was in his prime – the abundance and excitement of it all. (Although I thought the name of the book was a bit dramatic, lol.) This book was quite a blip in my reading journey this quarter, and I’m not sure if that’s because I was so interested in it or if I just wanted to say I’d read another this quarter.
All Fours by Miranda July
Now THIS was a book – I was totally and utterly hooked, and I felt as though I was the protagonist. Reading about femalehood through this lens, I feel, made me wiser. A woman approaching menopause is still a girl at heart who may not have all the answers and may not have untangled all feelings and emotions.
I think I will cherish this book for how raw and vulnerable it was in exploring topics I’ve personally not hit at before, and for giving me a glimpse into thought patterns or monologues I may encounter in my years to come. I think I’ll feel supported knowing someone else has felt these things before, no matter how embarrassing they may seem. The author also seems intertwined with the narrative, and I wonder if any of it is derived from her own experiences (which it probably is, as all writing, in my opinion, is just fictionalising the non-fiction we’ve lived).
Looking through her Instagram after reading, I found I had imagined the protagonist to be quite like the author – there were videos of her dancing in the way she talked about in her book, and a video where she sat in what seemed to be a motel room, not unlike the main setting of the book. It also explored relationships and different ways of coming to terms with what you may want to feel or experiment with, and finally be happy with, and that what you may think is the life you want for yourself for the future may not remain that way when the future becomes the present. The audiobook was read by the author, and it made it that much more involved, as you could really tell she wrote every bit of it with such pleasure and purpose, and her reading made it so much more ‘her’.
I also appreciated the protagonist not gendering her child – something which inspired me to think deeper about gender (further expanding on the readings from Invisible Women).
Highly recommend.
Down the Drain by Julia Fox
I found it a bit hard to keep up with all the people in the book – there were just so many, and I kept wanting to know who she was referring to in real life. You can bet I was on those Reddit threads trying to find the real-life versions of those in the book. I came across her pictures from her dominatrix days – images of her profile on the website where her ‘specialities’ were advertised, news articles where her name wasn’t mentioned but the events were detailed and matched her accounts in the book. That aspect of it was really thrilling for me – it was like I was uncovering secrets just beneath the surface that not everyone was privy to (they probably were).
I find her life fascinating, and her self real. I will say, though – and I haven’t heard or read many people share this opinion – that the writing was very mediocre. Short, simple sentences that seemed less ‘literary’ and more conversational, like with a close friend. Perhaps, again, it adds to the authenticity and proves she wrote it herself, but I found it interesting how the praise around her work was often for her writing, when in actuality, I think the writing seems great because what is being told is extraordinary and has shock factor. I did watch Uncut Gems after reading the book, and it was thrilling to know what went on behind the scenes.
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Woolf’s whole premise is basically intertwined with all the other feminist works I’ve read thus far – that women need to work for others to maybe have time to work (or rest) for themselves. That women are just as intellectual as men, if not more, but haven’t had the privilege and freedom to express such because they’re busy with other things like housework or having children.
I suppose Woolf’s perspective lends us a vision of the world she was in, before we had stats such as those in Invisible Women, or before we knew and understood women’s workload and its unfairness. She talks from observation and compares the male writers of her time to the lack of female writers. There is inherent privilege in her speech – she is white and, as she mentions, rich from the money left to her by her aunt, which allows her to write freely. However, she is not privy to other privileges that dictate her life – her race and sexuality, namely, where she uses slurs or derogatory words to refer to gay or Black people.
There is inherent racism and homophobia in her, which confuses me – how can she be so astute in her observations of the disparity between men and women, but not pick out the same discrimination in her own understanding of Blackness and queerness? I suppose it goes to show one can only advocate for things one has personally felt and encountered, and that dismantling deep prejudices is hard, tiring and empathetic work one may not even know needs to be done, because of the privilege that keeps them out of sight of prejudices unapplied to them.
It’s been an incredible year for me work/writing-wise, and you can have a look at all the work I’ve done this year (for other publications/magazines) here.
Catch ya in 2026 x