Penelope's Bones
Recovering Bronze Age Women's History
This week, Featured Author and classicist Nadya Williams reviews a new book on bronze age women, Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It. Growing our knowledge of these early women, Williams argues, can help us affirm the dignity of all persons.
Penelope’s Bones: Recovering Bronze Age Women’s History
Nadya Williams
Hauser brings quiet, two-dimensional characters into three-dimensional reality filled with color and emotion. In the process, we get to know the epic characters better, along with the historical women’s experiences that they reflect. The archaeological evidence Hauser uncovers helps us to better understand a tension implicit in Homer’s epics between women’s apparent powerlessness and their documented historical and political significance.
Hauser’s book is an important contribution to our growing knowledge of the world of Bronze Age women. Its one major weakness is that the specter of transgender ideology rears its ugly head on occasion, marring what is otherwise a superb work of scholarship and storytelling. In spite of this, Christian and Jewish readers—for whom the study of ancient women’s lives is motivated by more than mere curiosity—will find the book particularly meaningful.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Porn Companies Mislead, Men Can't Get Pregnant, and Misogyny in the Metaverse
This week: Nicholas Kristof on why we shouldn't trust porn companies, Jennifer Lahl on how men can't get pregnant (no matter what Yale scholars say), and Pippa Bailey on misogyny in the metaverse. Plus: paying "unpaid labor", the creative destruction of motherhood, motherless day, maternal feminism, Feminism, Defeated—and more!
From the Archives:
Featured Author Holly Lawford-Smith reviews the third edition of Nadine Strossen’s Defending Pornography—and finds lessons for today’s sex-realist feminists.
A Feminist Response to “Defending Pornography”
Holly Lawford-Smith
Or, more generally, the 1990s’ clash between “anti-censorship” feminists and “anti-pornography” feminists is equivalent to today’s battle between gender-critical feminists and the entrenched version of liberal, intersectional feminism. The anti-censorship feminists were, at one time, as the gender-critical feminists are now: the dissenting minority view against what looked like a nearly-impossible-to-shift feminist consensus.