Reading
1) Which Witch, Eva Ibbotson
2) Twilight, Stephanie Meyer
3) The Gammage Cup, Carol Kane
4) The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
5) The Observation Deck, Naomi Epel
6) The Secret of Platform 13, Eva Ibbotson
7) What You Wear Can Change Your Life, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine
8) The Lioness and Her Knight, Gerald Morris
8) Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony, Eoin Colfer
9) The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
10) My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, Jim Butcher et al.
11) My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon, Jim Butcher et al.
12) Rose of No Man's Land, Michelle Tea
13) Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
14) The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
15) The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
16) Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper
17) A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
18) Promiscuities, Naomi Wolf

A note about this last book before we go on to what I'm currently reading. Promiscuities talks about the sexual coming of age of young women in the sixties and seventies, and much of what she talks about makes sense. Our society places a negative value on female sexual desire. Men are supposed to be the aggressors, women the defenders. Therefore, if a woman is raped, it must be because she did not defend herself well enough. It's not the man's fault, because he can't help himself. Maybe she in some way showed some kind of desire, which in our society makes her a slut and therefore to be punished.

Seriously. Look at the words used to describe female sexuality and sexual organs: cunt, pussy, whore, slut. Even the word "vagina", while not ugly, sounds suspiciously clinical. You know there's a problem when Rayne from Least I Could Do shows a greater respect for women in the language he uses about them than the average, everyday man in the street.

Women deserve to be sexually active without social punishment, just as men are. Women deserve the right to desire men or women and the right to have that desire validated and approved by society. Having female desire suppressed and denied does no one any good; it leads to higher incidents of rape (because all good girls say no, even if they mean yes) and date rape (you have to get a woman drunk before she responds) and damage to everyone, men and women alike. For women, the damage is obvious. For men, it's a little more insidious. How, if you are a genuinely nice guy, like my boyfriend, do you approach a woman and try to please her when she doesn't even place a decent value on her own body and sexuality, and when society demands that you have sex with her to prove your own masculinity?

I'm not saying that anyone should be ashamed of having sex. Quite the opposite. I just wish that there was equal value on desire.

Currently Reading: Storm Front, Jim Butcher; Inkhart, Cornelia Funke; Legacy of Love, Joanna Trollope; Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger (expect some strong language from me on this one)