Dear Ms. Hamer,

[marshtide]

You know, I understand being annoyed by criticisms leveled at women based on their looks, on their apparent masculinity, or on their choice of clothes. Cool. Fair play to call that shit out.

I do being to question your judgement when you keep right on complaining about how people don't like said women because of their politics, how unfair is that, and fail to mention until two chapters later that their politics included, for example, a strong fondness for Mussolini. (I note you don't mention the thing about adoring Hitler at all, or the membership of the British Union of Fascists, which seem to come up regularly in other accounts of Mary Allen's life.) And then you seem to be trying to apologise for it. No, one doesn't have to centre-stage this stuff when one is discussing activity in other movements, but if one is going to actively protest the fact that some people find Allen to have been a really morally dubious figure... well.

I have to say, you're also just not a terribly good writer. And this isn't the first thing you've said that's made me go ...what?, it's just the worst offender so far.

I think I need to put this book away now before I throw it at something.

(I'll read Pippi Långstrump instead. Some thieves have broken into her house! Or rather, wandered in through the unlocked door! It's all very exciting.)

Comments

[oursin]

Am reminded of my irkedness with Virago and the Women's Press in, it must have been, the early to mid 80s? when if you were a contemporary author they held one to extremely stringent standards of political correctness, while dead aristocratic sapphists of extremely dubious political views presented them with no qualmishness whatsoever over publishing their works.

(Is the book, by the way, Britannia's Glory? Or has Hamer written something else since then?)

[marshtide]

Yeah. It's not that I think one can't/shouldn't look at the stuff they produced and the things they did, but to be uncritical? I don't think so. One really should be able to find these things interesting without having to agree with the people involved.

(It is indeed. I think she may have been involved in writing at least one other book, but I'm not quite sure. Can't say I feel motivated to check anything else of hers out, in any case.)

[oursin]

I recommend Laura Doan, Fashioning Sapphism: The origins of a modern English lesbian culture as being a lot more nuanced.

[marshtide]

Ooh! Recommendation gratefully accepted. :)

[annotated_em]

dot dot dot

Wow, yeah. That book sounds like it's worth throwing.

[marshtide]

And I would, with great satisfaction, were it not property of Göteborg university... I guess I will just place it with due care on the "take this stuff away now damn it" pile.