Immediately confused as to why this is heralded as a feminist text. Its foundation is a heteronormative, binary view, even doubling down on biological differences between men and women (explicitly stating that men are physically stronger). I was uncomfortable pretty quickly into it but held on to see if things evolved and…they did not.

Since this was released in 2017 I was curious if her thinking had evolved and expanded on gender to include all genders and trans people and discovered she has instead doubled down on anti-trans stances. Wish I had never spent time with this material.

I don't even know y'all. I think that if you have a super homophobic person in your life that you wanted to indirectly educate and they were super into gory revenge action movies this could MAYBE help them wake up a little bit but I also wouldn't hold your breath about it and you 10000% could not stop here.

The thing is that this is so thoroughly a straight, cis male perspective that if it's trying to make a commentary via that frame work I think it fails to do that, and if it's just the way this author writes (this is my first by him ((also my last)) so I don't know how his other works compare) it's failing to make any other point meaningfully.

There are quite a few moments where a side character tries to impart a moral lesson, but they totally fall flat in the carnage of easily escalating violence, the frequency of that violence being directed at queer people, and the constant onslaught of misogyny. While our 2 dads do some amount of reckoning with their failures it ultimately doesn't hold any weight because their response to the murder of their sons so entirely centers themselves. This vengeance and "justice" isn't for the boys because it's not in service of or in line with the boys. They remark several times that if their son was still alive they wouldn't approve - so how the cuss are these actions "for" them?? They aren't. These dads are solely serving their own egos and pride and the consequences are HIGH and there is absolutely no thought about the people they are murdering are also sons? Or the long term aftermath of this pursuit?

I know that we're not supposed to like these guys, and Cosby knocked that right out of the park, but I also just didn't like the tone. It's so crude and foul and graphic and I swear if I never hear about someones "nuts" again it'll be too soon.

And finally, the cherry on top - after a shoot out, the leader of the bike gang is taking inventory of the damage done and one of his crew is severely injured. He briefly ruminates on how unlikely survival is for this crew member and that if he DID survive, he for sure would be disabled for life. So he kills him. To spare him the agony of living as a disabled person.

And thus I won't be reading anymore Cosby.✌️