”… In a way, one could say that our character contains a residue of all the losses we have experienced: our personality on some level expresses the history of our losses, and particularly the history of our painful efforts to replace the irreplaceable. This is why I’ve always thought that those who have lost a lot tend to have more complex characters than those who have not; they have learned to live without breaking even though they have had every reason to break.”

Mari really has such a way with words. Especially given the more autobiographical inserts into this book, I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a kindred spirit. Unfortunately she passed in 2023, but I hope she’s finally found some peace now.

”I’m equally interested in the fact that many straight women today find themselves in a porn-related predicament that can be as confusing as it’s painful … a peculiar quandary that has yet to be clearly articulated: they’re faced with sexually reluctant men; they find themselves in the bizarre situation of being entirely secondary to the sex lives of their partners.”

This is in a section talking about how misogynistic “heteroporn” is (regularly depicting women being gagged, bound, degraded, etc) and how “…female sexuality has become more and more difficult to disassociate from pornography”.

This was published originally in 2018 and if anything I feel the situation has gotten 10x worse. Along with the author stating as such: I’m not anti-porn or sex work. But it’s not uncommon for women to end their relationship end due to excessive porn consumption by their partner. But even outside of that, popularity of “mainstream porn” in particular skews the perception young men hold towards women in 2026.

Things weren’t great in 2018, but men didn’t have “goon caves” or knew what Looksmaxxing was. There also wasn’t a myriad of misogynists that young men IDOLIZED so actively as they do today. Sure, the origins of these aren’t hard to pin down, but It’s sobering to take a peek even into the recent past and not realizing how much things have changed.

Chapter 2 predominantly covers marriage as a construct, which wasn't very new to me, but it did slightly cover an angle of gay marriage that was fascinating to me.

There were arguments made that marriage is put too high up on a pedestal in the social order, which I do agree with. The author used her lived experience of worrying about immigration status and how if you're married to a US citizen, the process is immensely easier. But one idea of thinking she proposed from some academic circles is that support of gay marriage is the "wrong fight" for social progress, versus fighting for (what in my interpretation would be) marriage/relationship anarchy. Where there is no specific benefit for choosing to conform to the construct of marriage at all, regardless of identity or relationship type. Instead having equal social standards for people who are single, monogamous, polyamorous, etc.

As someone who is cishet and grew up with great personal relationships to queer culture, as well as living in Massachusetts when gay marriage was legalized, I had never considered this angle before. I remember it being a universally celebrated piece of legislation promoting equality, but using this viewpoint it's clear that move has, if anything, emboldened the concept of marriage being the ideal relationship archetype to strive for.

I'm really curious how people who identify as Queer/LGBTQIA+/etc feel about this topic, because for me up until this point I considered marriage equality a universal good and net positive. But analyzing it through the lens of feminism and social ideology it's challenging that stance a bit.

Disclaimer: Throughought this chapter the author reiterates she is not decrying the function of marriage nor saying gay marriage is a bad thing. This is a philosophical book exploring the 'bad feelings' that can occur within numerous social frameworks.

”… as Ehrenreich explains, the ideology of positive thinking implies that “there is no excuse for failure.” It permeates large swaths of our culture, giving rise to the notion that success is attainable through ambition, striving, and calculated risks; that there’s no hindrance that can’t be overcome by perseverance; that effort will invariably be rewarded; and that dissatisfaction is always a temporary state, a mere stepping-stone to satisfaction.”

Gee, you ever come across a book at the right time you didn’t know you needed? This couldn’t be a more succinct summary of where my life is at if it tried 🫠