{"id":27639,"date":"2023-03-05T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T09:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=27639"},"modified":"2023-03-03T18:36:03","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T18:36:03","slug":"fruit-of-knowledge-the-vulva-vs-the-patriarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2023\/03\/05\/fruit-of-knowledge-the-vulva-vs-the-patriarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"Fruit of Knowledge – The Vulva vs. The Patriarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Liv Str\u00f6mquist<\/strong>, translated by Melissa Bowers<\/strong> (Virago)
\nISBN: 978-0-349-01072-4 (B\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to be using grown-up words today and there\u2019s stuff discussed and depicted here that many strident, officious (and mostly male) people simultaneously deny, deny access to, denigrate and demonise. They even dare to police how actual possessors & users of these body parts may employ or maintain them. Those guys won\u2019t like this book at all. <\/em><\/p>\n

If that\u2019s you, Go Away. There\u2019s nothing for you to see here and you\u2019ll only get upset. If that\u2019s not you, but you know where they live or hang out, there\u2019s no law that prevents you from buying a copy and sending it to them. Just a thought\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

If you know anything about female anatomy, all this will be funny, frightening, glaringly obvious and even enlightening. However, if you\u2019re male – or really, really repressed and\/or religious to a fundamental degree – you might want to stop here and pretend this book doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Wars are fought with intolerant attitudes, economics and misinformation far more than with guns, bombs, knives or deadly chemicals. Oddly enough, that latter arsenal has been used far more than you might imagine: by an ostensibly well-meaning parochial and explicitly patriarchal establishment intent on suppressing women in every walk of life.<\/p>\n

In 1978, Liv Str\u00f6mquist was born in Lund, Sweden. After studying political science, she rekindled an early interest in comics and fanzines to explore topics that gripped her. A cartoonist and radio presenter, she is dogged, diligent, meticulous and devastatingly hilarious when exploring themes important to her. Her first graphic enquiry was 2005\u2019s Hundra procent fett<\/em><\/strong> (Hundred Percent Fat<\/strong>) and she\u2019s since followed up with another 10 books, as well as articles and features for newspapers, magazines, assorted media platforms \u2026and comics. She leans left, despises hypocrisy and champions socio-political iniquities like income inequality and gender-determined disempowerment. She does it with scrupulously researched facts translated into cruelly hilarious satirical cartoons.<\/p>\n

A ferocious truth-speaker incensed by injustice, in 2014 Str\u00f6mquist released Kunskapens frukt<\/em><\/strong>, an historical exploration of taboos surrounding women\u2019s bodies. It was a global sensation translated into a dozen languages and arrived in English as Fruit of Knowledge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In a string of carefully constructed comic polemics, she explores, elucidates upon and demystifies the biology of women, how power-seeking groups and individuals have suppressed female autonomy, how male-led societies suppress knowledge, stifle debate, and use shame and gaslighting techniques to keep females downtrodden, destabilised and totally dependent at every level. We\u2019ve even twisted science and history to the cause: excising the very terms needed to efficiently debate the problem\u2026<\/p>\n

Guided by a curating avatar, a journey of rediscovery begins with Chapter 1: a history lesson discussing the quirks, insane beliefs and perpetrated atrocities of \u2018Men Who Have been Too Interested in the Female Genitalia\u2019<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

A staggering listicle of ignorance, arrogance and criminal callousness, this section details beliefs and actions of prominent personages who dictated how women should be. I\u2019m staying vague on detail for reasons of taste, but our countdown begins with the socially-applauded misdeeds of John Harvey Kellog<\/em> and Dr. Isaac Baker Brown<\/em> before spending lots of time with mega-misogynist St. Augustine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The shocking influence of \u201csexologist\u201d John Money<\/em> is outdone by the combined results of the instigators of Europe and America\u2019s witch trials (including an outrageous game of \u201chunt the devil\u2019s teat\/clitoris\u201d), before aristo fetish slaver Baron George Cuvier<\/em> mixes kink with racism to a degree that shaped decades of followers. Top dishonours go to those who exhumed Queen Christina of Sweden<\/em>\u2019s 300-year old corpse in an attempt to prove that the incredibly effective and pioneering monarch had been a \u201cpseudo-hermaphrodite\u201d – AKA Man – all along\u2026<\/p>\n

The appalling litany of deranged anti-female delusion is not simply cited for comedic effect (much of it is actually stomach churning to read) but is used to prove Str\u00f6mquist\u2019s argument that the aggregated efforts of \u201cMen\u201d shaped today\u2019s unjust system: from toxic medical attitudes regarding \u201cwomen\u2019s issues\u201d to the nonsense-&-prejudice minefield of gender attribution\/reassignment policies to the eternal verity that women only exist for men\u2019s use\u2026<\/p>\n

Crushing pressure to conform and excel is tackled in \u2018Upside-Down Rooster Comb\u2019<\/em>: showing how women and girls are deprived of knowledge of themselves and groomed to believe their most intimate parts are sub-standard, ugly, unhygienic, freakish and utterly unacceptable.<\/p>\n

In discussing a rise in labial plastic surgery, we see how men from every walk of life dictate what women must look like. There is special, prolonged, recurring an hilarious focus on how NASA airbrushed out a human vulva in images on the 1972 Pioneer space probe, and how successive male experts \u201cproved\u201d the female state of being (and attendant reduced self-esteem) was subordinate and dependent on male primacy\u2026<\/p>\n

The philosophical, negativistic macho clap trap of Jean-Paul Sartre<\/em>, Stig Larsson<\/em> and others is balanced by the views of psychologist Harriet Lerner<\/em>, but in the end science and school books confirm that the world believes women are there for men to put things in\u2026<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always so though, and Str\u00f6mquist\u2019s masterstroke is a formal lesson on anatomy, supported by thousands of years of art proudly \u201cputting the Vulva on display.\u201d Starting with the Greek myth of Demeter<\/em>, an almost sidelined fuller history of civilisation follows, citing how women \u201cexposing\u201d themselves remained a component of life everywhere well into the 1800s\u2026<\/p>\n

Because there aren\u2019t shocks enough yet, \u2018AAH HAA\u2019<\/em> re-examines female orgasm, revealing how much even the most supportive and in-tune bloke has been misinformed and misled, and how that elusive \u201cBig O\u201d was cynically reclassified and deemphasised. God and his earthly representatives don\u2019t do well in this chapter, and there\u2019s a stunning parade of quotes from medical men down the ages showing how we all slowly switched from \u201cdid the earth move?\u201d to \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Throughout, but especially here, historical anecdotes back up the argument. If the thought of woman after woman being maimed or killed by male intransigence is likely to upset you, suck it up: it\u2019s the least anyone can do to expiate centuries of accumulated and unwarranted sexual privilege\u2026<\/p>\n

A whimsical peek at a potential matriarchy and more revelatory biology regarding the clitoris heralds a full colour reworking of the Judaeo-Christian creation story in \u2018Feeling Eve – or: In Search of Our Mother\u2019s Gardens\u2019<\/em>. Interview excerpts illustrate women\u2019s eternal concerns: uncovering intimate moments of shame, fear, guilt, menstruation, masturbation, assault, body image and general ego-sabotage\u2026<\/p>\n

The book confronts head-on the uncomfortable occurrence we\u2019ve all been programmed to shy away from in \u2018Blood Mountain\u2019<\/em>: challenging adamant yet unshakably coy assumptions that make period products so gosh-darned profitable via some inspired role swapping, targeted historical trawling, a catalogue of nasty myths, modern psychoanalytic theories, episodic expos\u00e9s of the magic power of blood from \u201cdown there\u201d, reports of male PMS from ancient Greece, the revolting habits of Sigmund Freud<\/em> and fellow period fan Dr. Wilhelm Fliess<\/em> and examples and depictions of the \u201cred flowering\u201d from as far back as 15,000 years ago\u2026<\/p>\n

All that climaxes with a hard look at manufacturers\u2019 obsession with \u201cfreshness\u201d and \u201ccleanliness\u201d and how many of their \u201chygiene\u201d products are killing the planet, all backed up by evaluations of fairy tales through the lens of menstruation rituals\u2026<\/p>\n

Fierce, funny and thoroughly thought-provoking, Fruit of Knowledge<\/strong> is acute, astute and magnificently uplifting: challenging and negating centuries of divisive bias and propaganda by asking women to be their own person. This is a book to arm and unite everyone everywhere in accepting that women\u2019s biology and sexuality has never been the business of any man or organisation.
\n\u00a9 Liv Str\u00f6mquist. Original Swedish edition 2014 Ordfront\/Galago. Translation \u00a9 2018 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Liv Str\u00f6mquist, translated by Melissa Bowers (Virago) ISBN: 978-0-349-01072-4 (B\/Digital edition) We\u2019re going to be using grown-up words today and there\u2019s stuff discussed and depicted here that many strident, officious (and mostly male) people simultaneously deny, deny access to, denigrate and demonise. They even dare to police how actual possessors & users of these … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fruit of Knowledge – The Vulva vs. The Patriarchy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[113,214,299,122,125,170,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-european","category-feminism-sexual-politics","category-historical","category-humour","category-non-fiction","category-satirepolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7bN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27642,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27639\/revisions\/27642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}