Darkmistress's Full Review: That Takes Ovaries!: Bold Females and Their Brazen...
I actually bought That Takes Ovaries. I don’t buy books much, I borrow them, I read them at work, I ask for them for Christmas, but this one looked too good to pass up. For the most part it is too good to pass up. The premise of the book is for women to publish stories about their most brazen act. Some of these acts are very brazen, like the woman and her partner who hunted down her sister’s abusive husband and beat him up. Some of these acts are stupid, like sky surfing, but my failure to understand sky surfing is transgender. Some of these acts fall under what I consider "you’ve come a long way baby" category, like the 2 stories about wearing pants to school for the first time in the 60’s.
And some of, well, one of these stories fell into the "no, that was wrong" category. That particular story involved a group of women (molestation survivors to give it context) who trashed a porn store for ‘empowerment.’ Now I am perfectly aware of the fact that I’m not with the feminist crowd on this, but I don’t have any problem with porn, per se. Porn is going to exist, it just will. And some of it is degrading to women. It may surprise some radical and lemming-like feminists that some of it is just as degrading to men. However, men are a lot simpler to arouse than women are and therefore their porn is a lot simpler which, on the surface, would make it appear to be more degrading when it’s really just simplistic. Women, by and large, are also not interested in watching porn flicks therefore the movies are made to appeal to men just the way romance novels are made to appeal to women, so there isn’t a lot of cuddling. Plus, as porn star Tiffany Millions has said, (I paraphrase) "I’m making a lot of money off horney guys." (Oh, I am going to get so flamed.) For these reasons I didn’t feel that it was all that celebratory a cause for these women to tear up a porn shop although, Daddy’s Little Girl Magazine’s editorial office should be burned to the ground with the publisher trapped inside.
However, that is one out of 64 stories that bothered me, and only half of it was a problem.
The rest of the stories range from delightful and funny to heartrending. The very first story is about a woman who faced down a would-be burglar and convinced him to change his ways, all while wearing only a baby T-shirt (only a baby t-shirt.) A few pages later is the story of a former nun who so badly wanted to meet the Pope when he visited New York that she lied repeatedly and snuck in with the police honor guard. And shortly after that is the story of a woman who met Bill Clinton (while he was president) at a basketball game and convinced him to stay for the women’s game that was being played immediately after the men’s. The very next story happened when the author was 6. Her mother decided that the only way to escape her abusive husband was suicide so she gathered her children and walked to the train tracks. The author (at 6 years old) talked her mother out of killing them all and promised to protect her. All this comes before page 50. Like I said, delightful and funny to heartrending.
The book is very well organized by topic.
Chapter 1 On the Spot: Impulsive Gutzy Acts includes all the stories in the previous paragraph.
Chapter 2 After Some Thought: Making Life-Changing Choices which has a story about a woman who decided, when she was told she had to have a breast removed, to have both taken at the same time and another about a former prostitute who pulled herself out of the gutter, but not without difficulty.
Chapter 3 For Ourselves: Taking Charge of Our Bodies and Sexuality. I think of this chapter as the ‘it’s my body and I’ll play with it if I want to’ chapter. Erotica author Cecelia Tan and the founder of Good Vibrations are here.
Chapter 4 Danger: Risking Life or Limb. This is where the sky surfing story is. It also contains stories about a woman who migrated from El Salvador to America so she could send money to her children and a woman who made a documentary about brothels in India.
Chapter 5 Rebels: Individuals Taking a Stand which has the really amusing story about a woman holding a "pee protest" for handicapped accessible bathrooms. And a woman who chained shut the men’s bathroom facilities at a work site because the bosses wouldn’t provide a women’s bathroom. There is other stuff than stories about bathrooms too, I just like those best.
Chapter 6 Doing It Together: Collective Activism. There’s a story here of a high school girl who organized 150 girls at her school to stop a group of boys from rating their bodies as they left the lunch room each day. (Smart girl, my response probably would have involved beating on one of them which wouldn’t have changed anything.)
Chapter 7 "That’s Not Nice!": Acting on Anger. This is where the abusive husband beating takes place. This is also where the porn shop destruction resides. And one other story that bothers me a bit, but mostly because it sounds like something I would do. The very last entry is from a woman who caught her husband cheating on her and proceeded to Mad Max on the other woman’s car. On one level I’m thinking "that was very dangerous." On another level I’m thinking "I wonder where my brother-in-law’s little toy is now?"
That I guess is one of my little problems with the book. That it might inspire someone to do something completely dangerous (like rundown the woman who wrecked your brother-in-law’s marriage, preferably while he’s in range too.) However, I can only hope that it will inspire others to do something completely outrageous (like standing up for yourself in the face of a larger and/or male opponent or pulling yourself out of the gutter or out of a bad marriage or interfere when you see someone being beaten at the side of the road.) So I guess my problem isn’t so much of a problem as a hope and I’m sure there’s people that will disagree with me about that too.
The last section of the book provides instructions for open mike nights. I know at least one person who will if she can and I’m already considering what my story will be.
Overall this is a great book and shouldn’t be missed. The selections range from a short paragraph to a couple pages and cover a huge emotional range. The editor has also included organization information at the end of appropriate chapters, so you might want to read with your browser open.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.