Women, language, literature and the market

Anne Enright's DIARY, in the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, Vol. 39 No. 18 · 21 September 2017 (pages 33-35 | 5094 words) deals with the gender bias in literature (even in langauge and, of course, very much in business):

In 2015, the novelist Catherine Nichols sent the opening pages of the book she was working on to fifty literary agents. She got so little response she decided to shift gender and try as ‘George’ instead. The difference amazed her. ‘A third of the agents who saw his query wanted to see more, where my numbers never did shift from one in 25.’ The words, as written by George, had an appeal that Catherine could only envy. She also, perhaps, felt a little robbed. ‘He is eight and a half times better than me at writing the same book.’

Read on here

Thoughtful, mind opening!

Anne Enright in Wikipedia

Women, feminists and misogynists

Even with a misogynist predator-in-chief,
we will not be silenced

Eve Ensler, THE GUARDIAN, August 24, 2017

20 years after The Vagina Monologues, I’d like to say that feminists have won. But patriarchy is a virus and we are in the midst of a massive outbreak.

The first time I ever performed The Vagina Monologues, I was sure somebody would shoot me. It might be hard to believe, but at that time, 20 years ago, no one said the word vagina. Not in schools. Not on TV. Not even at the gynaecologist. When mothers bathed their daughters, they referred to their vaginas as “pookis” or “poochis” or “down there”. So when I stood on stage in a tiny theatre in downtown Manhattan to deliver the monologues I had written about vaginas – after interviewing over 200 women – it felt as if I were pushing through an invisible barrier, and breaching a very deep taboo.

Read more at THE GUARDIAN

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Presently it is still possible to express "alternative" views about facts, and not only approved, alternative facts, as the "misogynist predator-in-chief" wants to have it. For how long? The deep fascism and racism of the North American society in the US becomes more and more a danger. The first pussy-grabber and his followers, primitive men, were always around. But economic and political successes disguised and masked this fact, this ugly truth about the Leader-Nation. We all should wake up and oppose this scum, this hatred and warmongering. 

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