Women Without Kids

Now that I’ve deleted Instagram and Twitter from my phone, I’ve relegated my longer commute time to reading books. And this is the second time I’m drafting this blog entry because the first one inexplicably disappeared because of my idiocy in wanting to share to Twitter and realising I needed to save a draft first. SO insert here how I’m hoping I can keep up with my Goodreads goal and this isn’t just a new year new me trend.

Wedded Wife

I always thought growing up that getting married was the defacto happily ever after for me, but I knew that wasn’t the case because growing up, the cool women I looked up to were all my single aunts. Having said that, it’s good to read this book and see the political, social, cultural reasons women felt like they had to get married. And I’m so grateful I’m in a position where I know that when/if I do, it wouldn’t be for any other reason apart from my own desire.

Women Without Kids

Which was a great segue to this book, because once again, growing up, having kids seemed to be the default path for a woman and layer on a degree of religious upbringing there and then there was guilt if you married and didn’t have any kids because you didn’t want them. And I’ve always felt this compulsion to have to defend myself for my decisions but never having the right words or reasons (and really, do I need any?), so it was good to read this after the Wedded wife book because it just solidified further my beliefs and I felt less alone.

Man Made Women

Finally thought, this book that was literally written as a series of academic papers really made me question and think harder about my motivations for consuming porn as a woman given the violence that it perpetrates against women by the normalisation of porn and “sex” robots existence. I consider myself quite liberal and a “to each his own”kind of gal but this made me think harder and still keeps me thinking. I don’t have the answers but it’s good to have many more data points to think on.