Reviews and Comments

I got this book a long time ago in some Humble Bundle sale around comics; I forget when that was, but I've had it sitting in my calibre library for ages. Finally getting around to, at least, reading the graphic novels and comics, I started reading this.

I do not at all feel enticed to read anymore of it. It's paced far too quickly, even for a collected volume of comic books. The story doesn't feel cohesive, with much of it feeling entirely random. I don't even feel a connection with any of the stories (except maybe Ambrose and Salem? who I feel more about... and I feel nothing for anyone else at all).

Nor do I like the implication that is made about how it's easy to recruit oppressed people into an organisation (using Nancy, one of the few Black characters). It was... certainly a choice. Definitely not a choice I would've made, but it was fairly bigoted choice.

I'm also baffled by the choice to overlap Sabrina with Archie, but... Whatever. That's probably the least of this thing's problems.

Starting with the least egregious first: I have to say is that Dawkins' editors (across all the editions) definitely did not do their job, if they even tried to in the first place. There are areas where the book does nothing but repeat the same sentence over and over in consecutive lines, and it's like no one noticed that he wrote the same thing. I was starting to feel déjà vu when reading it out loud to my partner, and it was really pissing me off.

Next, his examples are almost entirely hypothetical, and I do not care if something is "mathematically sound." Does it actually work that way? Should I really be thinking of it in that framework? In a lot of parts, I really get the feeling that I shouldn't be and like he tried his best to tip-toe around the things he "shouldn't say but really wants to." Not to mention that at some point, in the update to the 40th edition, he tries to prove a point using hypothetical seaweed! Like, certainly there has to be something real that he could discuss. If not, he shouldn't present his thoughts or assumptions as fact.

It's an... incredibly sexist book that tip-toes around white supremacist structures. It's no wonder that so many dudes on red pill podcasts still really like this book (especially since I remember pre-red-pill that a lot of cis men loved this book, and it really became a red flag of sorts).

Tied to that, he really loves to go after either easy conservative critics of his book or people who actually have legitimate criticisms of his work (which he treats with contempt rather than really addressing them in a useful manner). For the former, it's because he made his name going after easy fundamentalist targets... so he's keeping his normal brand. For the latter, it's because he can't stand being told he's wrong or that he's misinterpreted something in a field he's not a part of (usually anthropology). This is hilarious because, in the epilogue to the 40th anniversary edition, he claims that scientists can at least be told they're wrong (unlike politicians). This is hilarious because my entire experience of scientists (and honestly, academics or high-level researchers) has been that they... can't handle people disproving them. We often get stuck with incorrect science for decades because of this! It's amazing that he'd ever say it, but it's not surprising because... that's literally him.

There was at least one really funny moment that felt very out of place. We were reading all of the footnotes as we went. Many of these were far too long and should've never been allowed to be a footnote, which is another reason why I think his editors didn't do shit to actually make the book coherent. Like seriously, there was one footnote that was roughly five pages and entirely about penises for some reason that I cannot remember and did not feel relevant to the conversation at hand, and there were many others to correct things that didn't need to be corrected, like to account for updates to a series of novels that he referenced that wouldn't have changed the point he was making. But the best one was him complaining about computer viruses and programmers who make them and just... what the fuck. It was so out of left field that, as I was reading it, I thought I'd lost my mind.

This book is rubbish. Whatever useful information anyone has gleaned from it, we don't need this. It's truly an excessively verbose piece of nonsense written by one of the most pompous men in his field.

I feel like I've slowed on reading this because I just... am frustrated with the way the story is written. Like, it's not bad. It's just annoying that some characters don't seem to know what they're on about.

I still have a lot of book left, but I'm still trying to work out how this one narrative thread is being used? Because the author, in the press for the book, keeps pointing at a historical case that this fiction is based on... and it's just making me go "Yeah, but you said there wasn't a lot of press on this case. And that was a core feature of why the court was able to get away with treating her so badly... because what press was there wasn't sympathetic and there wasn't much of it at all, including from Cypriot press. So why not build that instead of... this form of malicious press? Which is also real but doesn't match the rest of the story, where the core focus is how she's being neglected by everyone and that neglect is assisting the court in assuring her guilt and later her death."

The absolute worst part of this specific version of this specific novel is Chuck Palahniuk's introduction. I don't know why you'd ask him, of all people, to write a 'feminist intro' (or maybe he did that of his own accord, who knows)... But he failed miserably and engaged in misogynistic insult throwing while failing to understanding how structures of patriarchy, classism, and white supremacy intersect. (And he couldn't even recognise varying elements of queerphobia that were at play, either.)

Which is confusing considering Levin does a decent job at highlighting the horror of the 'feminist backlash'. Because it's much easier to see the backlash coming from the people in the middle- and upper- classes, this book is positioned well. It's still interesting to see that at least two of the women feel safe and secure with their "supportive" husbands, even though they have been steadily walking towards a tighter patriarchal structure right under their noses.

As long as you're behaving "correctly," according to them, they're happy to let you have the world you think you live in.

So much of this resonates strongly because we still see it, across a range of political views. Much like the characters in the book, many people of marginalised genders are still gaslit about their experiences and feelings and thoughts on the regular. Even within relationships with "radical" cishet men who "are feminist," many of us still struggle to have them actually listen to and care about our concerns only for them to tell us that they're "one of the nice ones."

Overwhelmingly, this book is able to portray a lot of the issues that women (and, if we're honest, people of all marginalised genders) face. Ironically, even the concerns of Chuck Palahniuk's introduction are addressed in the form of the woman who is a psychiatrist that the protagonist sees at her husband's behest; she tells her that there's nothing inherently wrong with Stepford, that the protagonist is overreacting to the fear and frustration of moving to the suburbs from the city... She doesn't listen to the concerns and only tries to say that they are solvable via her, that she has the answers. She's unknowingly working towards supporting patriarchal values and notions simply by denying the protagonist's feelings and explaining them away.

There are some undercooked concepts and discussions (like race and class), I think. But overwhelmingly, this just reminded me of the recent trend of trad wives. I think we've socially replaced the concept of the 'Stepford wife' with the concept of the trad wife.

Reading Chuck Palahniuk's introduction... and it feels off because it doesn't seem to recognise an accurate directionality of oppression.

In the end of it he says:

Nevertheless, it's odd how the bookshelves are filling with pretty dolls. Those glazed pretty dolls wearing their stylish designer outfits—Prada and Chanel and Dolce—swilling their martinis and flirting, flirting, flirting in their supreme effort to catch a rich husband. Always a rich husband. Instead of political rights, they're fighting for Jimmie Choos. In lieu of protest, they express themselves through shopping. And men, they're no longer the oppressors—these days other women are, older women. In The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic, in this new generation of 'chick lit' novels, men are once more the goal. It's successful women who torment our pretty, painted narrators. Brassieres are back, as are girdles, eyelash curlers, perfumed and meticulously shaved underarms. The speculum and the cervix are forgotten. This it seems is progress: women may now choose to be pretty, stylishly dressed, and vapid. This is no longer the shrill, politically charged climate of 1972; if it's a choice freely made, then it's... okay.

and then:

Now everyplace is Stepford, but it's okay. It's fine. This is what the modern, politically aware, fully awake, enlightened, assertive women really, really really wants: a manicure.

... And the problem with this is that it's recognising symptoms as opposed to causes. It's not looking at capitalism and overconsumption, it's not looking at the structure of patriarchy, it's not looking at white supremacy, it's not looking at classism. It's missing everything for, like, some strange misogynist hits at women and their apparently willful desire to give up political rights... But it's the whole problem to miss these things.

There's another line that says: "Women are the ultimate threat to women." And while this is true in some contexts (the glass ceiling, reinforcing misogyny, engaging in transmisogyny and transphobia), it's not... the full reality. It's flippant.