marshtide: (Snufkin - The traveller)
Read & enjoyed Inseparable - nonfiction by Emma Donoghue about relationships between women in fiction (mostly English & French lit and plays, which seem to mostly fall between the 1600s and the mid 20th century, with outliers). Learnt things, got interesting lines of reference to chase up, enjoyed the writing style. It covers both deliberately lesbian/queer/terminology-of-choice fiction and stories featuring unspecified but intense relationships between women, and pokes through books that are considered classics (or infamous) and books that are completely obscure without discrimination.

(...I also guiltily suspect that reading about some of these stories is approximately a million times more fun than actually reading the story in question. Possibly this makes me a bad person, but then again, you try actually reading The Well of Loneliness.)

ETA: & you know, every time I read about melodramatic Victorian and early 20th century lesbian fiction (term used loosely) I end up thinking of Ikeda Riyoko. Oh Ikeda Riyoko. It's like you had a checklist sometimes.
marshtide: (Mist)
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.)

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