Dude, we get it...the E.R.A. movement scared you

Good gawdalmighty.  I just finished up reading a book written by a woman with a serious axe to grind.  The axe being "don't let your women get too independent, or they'll stop being proper women, and then what the hell will we do with 'em?"

 

The central message of this novel is that women want and need to be dominated and subjugated by men.  A. Lot.

Published in 1984, just two short years after the Equal Rights Amendment was shot down, the anxiety about the increasing uppityness of women is transparent and palpable.  Every other page is larded with heavy disapproval of Sam's independence and with covert admiration for Mike's breaking her down and "putting her in her place."

Dialogue is overtly sexist, and many of the so-called sexy scenes strike me as pretty close to rape.  There's a lot of "'no'-means-I-am-not-trying-hard-enough" and a lot of breaking down of defenses.

The trope of "belligerent sexual tension" is the theoretical principal motivator of the narrative.  However, Samantha is pretty fucking vile pretty much from page 1 through page 252, as is Mike.  Basically, both protagonists are completely loathsome.  She's basically a buzzsaw with tits, and he's a cocky, megalomaniacal bully who's trying to rule the world with his cock.

There is so much just brainbendingly awful text in this book, I can't even.

When I started this project, I stopped at Office Max on my way home from work one night and bought myself a little pack of those Posty-Note page marker tabs, such as you use on legal documents where you have stuff you need to reference in a report.  

As you can see, I used almost an entire block of them to demarcate remarkably offensive, sexist, or sexually-aggressive passages in this book.  Eventually, I kind of got weary of even marking this shit.

And, because there is SO MUCH to object to in this book, I'm not even going to bother transcribing this foolishness.  I'm posting photos of the text, consequences be damned.  I seriously doubt this book is still in print, and if anyone wants to actually seek out and buy a copy to read, well heck, the title and author are pretty much the first thing you'll see on this page.  Knock yerself out, folks.

Okay...on with the show, this is iiiiiiitttt,

A little bit of back-story.  This Mike Sutherland guy is a bigtime contractor and has been poaching a lot of Samantha's best workers.  She ambushes him at a jobsite, bitches him out, not knowing that the random muscley lunkhead she's castigating is actually the business owner, and he determines that he won't carry on a fight on his jobsite and insists that she go out to dinner with him to discuss the situation.  He picks her up from her apartment in a Ferrari (NB, how delightfully, tackily 1980s, right???) Immediately, squicky sexual tensions begin to arise.  Also much belligerent attraction, or whatever they call it over on TV Tropes.

In the swanky restaurant, he starts macking all over her.  Because nothing impresses a lady like being full-court-press seduced in a public place, amirite?

I just highlighted this one because it is annoyingly sexist and made me want to just go upside a fictional character's head with a brickbat, is all.

 Blah, blah, almost-sex scene (I say "almost" because they don't actually get their bone on until about 20 pages from the end).  I only highlight it because of the whole "[h]is intense masculinity subjugated..." bit.  Because who doesn't want to be subjugated?  Oh wait...yeah.  Most of us.  Also, what's with the scorching?  Is he filled with molten lead or something?  Weird.  Also I accidentally cut off part of the passage, but apparently he is a Houdini when it comes to undressing a woman and can get her dress undone without her knowing it. 

 One of those delightful quasi-rape scenes.  Oh.  Yay.

 Because what women really want is to give over the governance of their lives to someone else.  Preferably a man who insults them and cuts them down in front of their colleagues and employees.

 A little more of the "'no' just means I'm not trying hard enough" action.  Good god, the message that it is okay, and even desirable for a man to push for sexual action is pervasive in this book.  Back when I was an earnest young thing in college and we did a unit on romance novels in a popular culture class, I formulated the notion that a lot of romance novels are sold to young women whose ideas about sex and relationships are very malleable and that a girl could get the idea that it was all right and even perhaps preferable if a guy was kind of mean to her or was sexually aggressive.  That these books could help formulate a young woman's attitude toward sex, gender norms, and what is acceptable in a relationship.  Given that this particular novel wears its agenda out loud and proud, my old, rickety theory raised its hand and waved "hello."  I really do see a lot of these novels as being a  sort of cultural primer for sexual and romantic behavior intended for an impressionable audience.  And in that, such novels with questionable intent (like the one under discussion today) carry a certain amount of potential danger for the impressionable and disinclined-to-analyze reader.

 Woo, woo.  More sexism.

 Well, here's some more quasi-rape to warm your knickers.  Hot sauce, right? 

 Heyo!  He actually causes her physical damage.  Goodfuckinggrief.

 I think the author is trying to go for the "she likes it rough" trope, but it still comes off so very unpleasant.

 Ah yes, again with the "I should let you run my life" schtik.  Because men just want their women to be puppets, and all women secretly wish they were marionettes.

 So, now because she won't go all the way with him, he is trying to make her jealous and basically guilt her into fucking him.  Klassay.

 The spanking scene.  Because physical intimidation and infantalization are nothing but hawwwwt.

 He doesn't spank her after all.  So she claws him across the mug. 

 He ends up meeting her mother who informs him that Samantha definitely needs a man to boss her around.

 Blah, blah, seduction.  I just was particularly taken by the description of his seduction of her as being a "deep invasion [that] was wholly male."  Hurr, hurr, penetration.

 Another reference to the curtailed spanking scene.  And reference to the notion that naughty little girls need punishment and that he's more than happy to dole it out.

 "No" means "goddammit woman, I'm gonna make you want me, so getta load of this tongue."

So, after she finally gives in and gives up her virginity (of course she was a virgin; of course) to the manly-Mike, Mike does her the favor of running off her ex-boyfriend by basically calling her a slut.  Thoughtful guy, eh?

 Further explanation of the ex-banishing maneuver.  Because a woman can't be trusted to a) know her own mind, b) take care of her own relationships, and c) be trusted to manage either.

By this point the entire endeavour has become so tedious I can't even continue.  I managed to finish the book, in which they bickered and battled until damn near the very final page.  Bickered, battled, and boned.  Both protagonists were complete assholes and really, spending as much time with them as I did was a real feat of endurance.  I need to get better at, you know, skimming a book instead of getting all committed to reading it, no matter how brutally awful it is.  Some characters really are a waste of my time and good nature.