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A new lock for my apartment door and the locksmith to put it in was not really what I'd been planning on getting myself for my birthday. Oh well. (Nothing dramatic happening, just - an old lock that's barely been letting me in or out of my apartment the last couple of days.)
What I've recently finished reading
Susanne Staun: Mediernes møgkællinger: magt, myter og misinformation
This was a pretty chilling read. Susanne Staun basically documents how the media have been parading a bunch of men around, letting them tell stories about how their ex-wives are evil and keeping their children from them, and the media just lapping it up and believing Danish MRA groups and not investigating or caring that the men in question have restraining orders or the women are hiding in crisis centers. She examines the media-born myth of the "evil bitch", who lies and steals children from innocent victimized dads. It's a good book. It's a scary book, actually.
You know, I think the most damning thing is - what she most attacks are not the dads of the stories she tells, not really - and not the MRA group either. It's the journalists who have mindlessly fallen for the stories they told - and the most damning thing about the book, is that when I search for "mediernes møgkællinger" in Infomedia, I get a bunch of reviews (most positive, one very negative) and articles about Susanne Staun - and one single attempt at a counter attack from a journalist, from Ekstrabladet, focusing on one single line in the entire book. One line. Which was hearsay anyway. The rest? Remarkably quiet.
Actually, this book focuses on divorces and custody conflicts, but a lot of it reminded me of the kind of reactions and debates I've seen on facebook when, once in a fortunately rare while, somebody runs a story about an "evil bitch" who cheated a man into becoming a father (because apparently men don't know how birth control actually works? don't ask - I'm still trying to figure out how anybody can make themselves seriously think that any woman would go out one night with the plan to have unprotected sex with a random stranger - to me, that most of all sounds like a recipe for going home with gonorrhea or worse), as well as some of the comments I see on social media whenever there's a story about single women having children using a donor. It all feels so very toxic.
Ben Aaronovitch: Rivers of London: Black Mould
Having now read it and honestly? That bit of yuletide wank about this was ridiculous? All you need to know about that character can be summed up in a single paragraph or maybe two.
What I'm reading now
Neal Stephenson's The Rise and Fall of DODO, which is good, but - like all his books - also a slow, dense read, and Inge Eriksen's Luderen fra Gomorra, which I can't quite decide if I like or not.
What I'm reading next
We'll see. Maybe something cheerful, that doesn't involve real life tragedies or fictional apocalypses.
Total number of books and comics read this year: 167
What I've recently finished reading
Susanne Staun: Mediernes møgkællinger: magt, myter og misinformation
This was a pretty chilling read. Susanne Staun basically documents how the media have been parading a bunch of men around, letting them tell stories about how their ex-wives are evil and keeping their children from them, and the media just lapping it up and believing Danish MRA groups and not investigating or caring that the men in question have restraining orders or the women are hiding in crisis centers. She examines the media-born myth of the "evil bitch", who lies and steals children from innocent victimized dads. It's a good book. It's a scary book, actually.
You know, I think the most damning thing is - what she most attacks are not the dads of the stories she tells, not really - and not the MRA group either. It's the journalists who have mindlessly fallen for the stories they told - and the most damning thing about the book, is that when I search for "mediernes møgkællinger" in Infomedia, I get a bunch of reviews (most positive, one very negative) and articles about Susanne Staun - and one single attempt at a counter attack from a journalist, from Ekstrabladet, focusing on one single line in the entire book. One line. Which was hearsay anyway. The rest? Remarkably quiet.
Actually, this book focuses on divorces and custody conflicts, but a lot of it reminded me of the kind of reactions and debates I've seen on facebook when, once in a fortunately rare while, somebody runs a story about an "evil bitch" who cheated a man into becoming a father (because apparently men don't know how birth control actually works? don't ask - I'm still trying to figure out how anybody can make themselves seriously think that any woman would go out one night with the plan to have unprotected sex with a random stranger - to me, that most of all sounds like a recipe for going home with gonorrhea or worse), as well as some of the comments I see on social media whenever there's a story about single women having children using a donor. It all feels so very toxic.
Ben Aaronovitch: Rivers of London: Black Mould
Having now read it and honestly? That bit of yuletide wank about this was ridiculous? All you need to know about that character can be summed up in a single paragraph or maybe two.
What I'm reading now
Neal Stephenson's The Rise and Fall of DODO, which is good, but - like all his books - also a slow, dense read, and Inge Eriksen's Luderen fra Gomorra, which I can't quite decide if I like or not.
What I'm reading next
We'll see. Maybe something cheerful, that doesn't involve real life tragedies or fictional apocalypses.
Total number of books and comics read this year: 167
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I'm going to stick my head in the sand on this one; it sounds too depressing, even if it is an important book >:[