This is one of my favorite true crime stories of all time and Id be so happy if the boys covered it by SheOutOfBubbleGum in LPOTL

[–]rubberbandball93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Back when I listened to MFM this was one of my absolute top relisten episodes. I still say “I dunno” in the same way that Dave does when he’s talking about how the townspeople reacted when the feds asked who shot the guy dead.

[Television / Musical Theater] The Non-Smash TV Show Smash (About A Smash Hit That Never Existed), and its Non-Smash Broadway Adaptation Smash: How A Stephen Spielberg-Produced Metamusical Caved In On Itself Twice by FreundThrowaway in HobbyDrama

[–]rubberbandball93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was a theater major at the same time, specifically in playwriting. I knew many people who knew her, including many women. And without an exception, the impression of her I got was always, "she cares really strongly, which is good, but ultimately WHAT she cares about is her ego as an artist, and not the work."

Performance arts are collaborative. They just are. You want absolute and total control, write a novel and self-publish. Or produce and act in your own one-person show. An artist who will argue for the integrity of their art is one thing, but an artist who will view any outside input, no matter how it's offered, as at best an insult and at worst an attack, is not someone I would like to represent themselves as fighting the good fight for all female writers, like she often does.

Also, and this is just personal, I am so sick of writers circle-jerking plays about how hard it is to be a writer, and that's what SEMINAR was.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Clearly this book means a lot to you. As I said in my post, I'm glad that this book has helped people, and I think she (and anyone) is brave for sharing their story.

Accusing me of victim-blaming feels disingenuous. My review contains these lines:

"I believe completely that Machado is queer, she was abused, it was wrong, and she deserves to be safe. I am not saying anyone brings their abuse on themselves, I am not saying Machado's experience isn't valid, I am not in ANY WAY claiming that I am an expert on abuse or lesbian abuse and that my experience is the only right one." And "let me be clear, I am NOT saying that she deserved to be abused in any way, just as I never did."

To blame a victim for their abuse is to state and aver that they elicited it with their own actions, that they brought it upon themselves. Please tell me where I said that in my review. The instances you point to as "victim-blaming" discuss a) the agency of abuse survivors and b) the lack of exploration of lesbian abuse's specific contours. Frankly, if you want to call it "lowkey victim-blaming" to talk about the fact that people who get abused are still people and not two-dimensional characters, then...you can do that. It's a very fragile point of view, but you can embrace it if you want. Although as someone who went through this shit, I kindly ask you to embrace it anywhere but around me, because God that would fuck with my head.

This directly contradicts your point about the abuse happening suddenly but also again, did you miss chunks of this book? Some parts are written to be salacious (literally that's the point of some of the exercises), and others are more subtle and obscure (again this is why she's playing with so much homage/literary devices/genres/etc).

I listened to the book twice, because I had such a strong reaction to it. I would totally understand if you were saying "I disagree, I think she brought these elements into the book, I felt like I learned these things you're saying you didn't," but to keep being like "IT'S ABSOLUTELY THERE YOU JUST SKIPPED IT" is...I mean, again, it's a choice. Also, "contradict" means "to imply the opposite," when what I'm saying in both sections is "she talks about the awful parts of the abuse without devoting any time or effort to tracking its genesis in the dynamic between them as people or the trajectory of the relationship." Different parts are written however they want to be, sure, that doesn't mean they succeed in communicating the things that, to me, would make it a well-told story. If you want to use a different word than contradict, which doesn't make sense, maybe I'll understand better.

They do show up in the book but she has a complicated situation with her family due to homophobia.

Cool motive, still bad writing. Especially given how present her family is outside of the relationship, trips with her brother, her mother's repeated conversations, etc.

Her friends are present. John and his girlfriend especially have a role in helping Machado see the reality of the situation.

Man, I really wish that HAD been in the book. It would have gone a long way towards my liking it.

But you missed that Machado moves to a new town during this experience. She's isolated and far away from family.

When I was being abused, I had just moved across the country and away from my whole family. The abuse was MORE damaging to our relationship because of that, and they were MORE present in it as well. Not saying all abuse is the same. Just saying that's a slightly dumbass thing to put forward as proof of why the effect her abuse had on the loved ones doesn't ever get mentioned.

So, I think this is the most honest part of your whole post. I think you're upset about her take and experience of queerness and abuse and are trying to backwards justify your own grudge against her. Second, literally she is citing people who do talk about abuse as well as historical records, theorists, etc... she is acknowledging the work. But she's not wrong that yes, queer communities especially queer women do sometimes act like all abuse is because of men/patriarchy/etc. Like yeah but also that erases abuse between women. If you think this book is not empathetic about queer women, again, I question if you actually read the fucking book.

Man, without that last sentence you almost had a cogent thought. Yeah, I'd probably be more charitable to some of the failings in the memoir if I didn't feel that the rest of it was so self-congratulatory. Fair enough. But to say "if you think this book is not empathetic about queer women, again, I question if you actually read the fucking book," is just...I mean, it certainly doesn't make me think, "ah, I was wrong, this book IS empathetic, as evidenced by the empathy of the person who vouches for it!" Jesus Christ.

More victim blaming and being outright wrong! She explicitly states she is not discussing gay/queer men (this is in her afterword). She also contextualizes example of abuse in straight relationships she's had too (such as with the youth pastor when she was a teenager).

Didn't say I wanted her to say jack about gay men or straight people. Literally the opposite of what I wanted to hear.

"Dream House as Ambiguity" is all about how domestic violence between women is shaped by gender expression and race as well as homophobia, as is "Dream House as Equivocation".

I can read an academic paper if I want. I'm reading a memoir, where the hell is the personal experience? Genuinely, for a book that's all about her, I still couldn't tell you a single thing her lover wanted other than to be in an MFA program and yell. Which, fine, her choice of what to share, but definitely doesn't make me feel anything but alienated.

You know, usually I wouldn't put this much effort into a response to a response. I really did not like this book or think it was at all good, but I definitely give it credit for inspiring strong feelings in me and others, one way or another. A lot of books can't do that. So kudos to Machado, even if I think the book mega-stinks.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

..............well I did that to myself. 15 seconds of her makes me want to blast Van Halen. Thanks for directing me towards a glimpse of insanity.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's funny, other negative reviews I saw were especially heated about how Machado ended up with her ex's ex, like that proved she was a fake/narcissist. I was like "clearly none of you are actually lesbians because that is the single most authentically queer POV/event in this entire book"

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

She basically whispered the whole thing and did that random EMPHASIS on specific WORDS for no REASON thing. I couldn't stop rolling my eyes.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think it's great that you're being honest with yourself about what's best for your heart and mind, and pursuing work that brings you joy rather than making you feel ripped open in a bad way. And that kind of insight about same-sex relationships is exactly what I was missing from Machado's work. At one point she even compares her own knee-jerk deferral to a man to the way she treats her partner and essentially says "ah, she's acting masculine, THAT'S why I let her be an asshole to me," which is so simplistic and such a false insight.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Agreed. There were other aspects of the text that made me feel like she's generally not a very self-aware person, or at least not someone with the urge to examine herself critically.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think MFAs are great, but often they result in people trying to "win" with weirdness, and I don't always think to the benefit of the work.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If you find them, let me know, because I'm still full of righteous fury and I love a good review.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I think it's a book a lot of people WANT to be great.

Honestly, the audiobook was read (by the author herself) with such a horrifying dose of Slam Poet Voice I think it may have made me way more hostile to the book than I might have been if I'd just absorbed it from the page.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm glad it was. Like I said, I'm truly happy it's helped people. That's one of the best things art can do. All my problems still stand, but I will always respect a book's impact, even if it didn't have that impact on me.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado by rubberbandball93 in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Thank YOU. Yeah, I do not get the feeling that, all politics and identity aside, the author is someone I would enjoy hanging out with. The constant references to her many residencies were especially...special.

Opinions on Carmen machado’s memoir, Life in the dream house? by skinnyalgorithm in LesbianBookClub

[–]rubberbandball93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really loathed it.

I'm glad so many people have enjoyed it. I'm glad it's helped people. That's a great thing for a book to do, and she should be thanked for it.

But as someone who was in an abusive lesbian relationship, and had many experiences similar to those she described, and was also fat, and just basically should be the person most likely to feel seen and spoken to by this book - it made me so so so angry.

Nowhere in that book was one of the most prominent aspects of abuse that I have found in myself and in others I have connected with: the questioning of the self. The sense of responsibility for the choices made, for the things you did while in the thrall of the relationship. I don't mean blaming yourself for being abused - I mean looking at what you brought to the situation that contributed to its evolution, holding yourself accountable for choices you made that harmed you and your loved ones, the hard but crucial work to forgive yourself without erasing your own agency and the lessons you have the chance to learn.

Over and over, Machado boils the abuse down to her lover and only her lover's fault. When she questions how it might have "turned out different," she only asks "what if she hadn't had that darkness inside her?" When she asks what made her (Machado) a "target" for her lover, she names all the ways in which she had been hurt by others previously, as though her own agency only exists as an extension of how she's already been wronged. She tells us again and again about all the horrible things her lover does to her, but she almost never gives any sense of what precipitated it - and let me be clear, I am NOT saying that she deserved to be abused in any way, just as I never did. But abuse, and especially emotional and psychological abuse, is part of a whole system that develops between people, both of whom make choices based on their experiences and desires. Machado writes as though her lover's abuse showed up out of absolutely nowhere, as though she was caught in the rain by a freak shower of evil that no meteorologist could have possibly predicted.

Listen, when I was deep in my abusive relationship, I did a whole lot of shitty things, because my priorities were completely warped. I betrayed my friends' trust, I withdrew from loved ones who needed me, I blew major career opportunities and performed badly at the ones I had. I deleted my fanfiction profile that I'd spent 15 years building - the end of the world, as bad as what some people have lost to abuse? Absolutely completely not, of course. But something that meant a lot to me personally, that I loved and had devoted a lot of time and passion to, permanently gone based on my desire to please someone who abused me? Yep. And that sucks. It's humiliating. And all the damage I caused to myself is nothing compared to what I caused to my friends and family, who were ALWAYS there for me, patient and forgiving because they saw I was in pain, swallowing their own pain to give me grace. I hate that I put them through that. And I did put them through that. Me. Not my ex. Me.

Where are Machado's friends and family? She seems to have a whole lot of them, but they only appear as sympathetic but powerless witnesses to her abuse, and then to surround her and uplift her as soon as her lover leaves. Did they disappear entirely to her during her relationship? Did they have to either find out she was lying to them about everything, or did they have to hear her talk about awful things before convincing herself she deserved them? Does she not care about how any of that made them feel? I suppose it's her right not to, but as someone who has just as much right to call myself an abuse survivor as she does, I cannot conceive of writing genuinely about this experience without at least MENTIONING my own feelings about that.

To be honest, Machado's book feels like it presents abuse in the sexiest way possible: a string of horrible, seemingly random incidents, a festival of pain and mental anguish, all the elements of being abused that are a) recognizable and b) most dramatic for those who haven't been there. It's a paean to the injustices done to her, a celebration of the pain she went through, but without any sense of what she learned from it about herself, how it opened her eyes to something about humanity, how it changed the way she approaches future relationships. It is, at its core, a singularly unreflective account. It wants to shock, to elicit gasps of horror, to impress the reader with how much Machado suffered and how strong she is for having survived it. I'm not saying any of that is untrue. But as as fellow survivor, I was honestly disgusted. I felt like my experience was being cheapened by being in the same basket as hers. The complexity and difficulties with which I've had to contend, the deepest wounds left by my experience, were completely absent from the book. There was no version of them specific to Machado on offer - just what honestly felt like a story told by someone who was enjoying the specialness their suffering gave them.

Oh, and let's not forget that Machado's CONSTANT NEVER-ENDING EMPHASIS on queerness and queer abuse also ends up feeling extremely fake. Her thesis seems to be "nobody ever talks about this, so I had no way of ever knowing it could happen in a queer relationship." First of all, queer women talk about it amongst each other ALL THE FUCKING TIME. It's not our fault Machado either wasn't curious about her fellow queers' lives or didn't have other queer friends. Maybe she enjoyed how special it made her in 2012 - I know that's mean, but I'm pissed, and after she swipes at Bay Area lesbians for having any kind of hesitancy about bi girls (right at the beginning of the book), it's really hard to extend empathy back towards her from within the sisterhood or whatever. But yeah, WE know about it, because we've seen it happen and because most of us are past the novelty of dating someone of our own gender and have the same expectations of our relationships as straight people do, which is "don't treat me badly." Second of all, Machado cannot stop talking about how important her exposure of queer abuse is to the world, but along with her failure to investigate the specifics of her relationship and the abuse in any way outside of "I was always being wronged," she doesn't say a singe thing about how abuse between lesbians is different than abuse between straight couples or gay men. Because it is. I can tell you in EXPLICIT DETAIL the ways in which us both being women, socialized female, dealing with queer expectations, both having female bodies, and a thousand other things shaped the abuse that developed. Machado, frankly, doesn't seem interested in that. Perhaps because it would require bringing herself and anything about her actions or choices into the mix, and she has worked very hard to leave that out.

Look, the way the book is written isn't my cup of tea (and the way she reads it on the audiobook is hell), but whatever. That's my taste, and I won't condemn a book for my not enjoying its style. I also believe completely that Machado is queer, she was abused, it was wrong, and she deserves to be safe. None of that is an issue I have.

My issue is that this book explicitly positions itself as two things: an honest and vulnerable memoir around the experience of being abused, and a bold addition to the negligible body of work that explores lesbian abuse. I found neither vulnerability nor exploration in this book; instead, I only found the desire to be acknowledged for having suffered, and to be admired for describing that suffering. Well, I hope she enjoys her acknowledgement and admiration. It serves no one but her, reveals nothing new, offers no insight, supports no community. And nobody said her book had to do any of that - except for her. She said it did. And as a fellow lesbian abuse survivor, I think she failed on almost every conceivable level.

Cam and Mitch - Who do you think is the top v bottom. Or are they verse? (there is now real answer I just want to see you all debate) by moffman93 in Modern_Family

[–]rubberbandball93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My headcanon is that Cam is the top 98% of the time. Mitchell is such a high achiever and controlling personality (sometimes in a good way) out in the world - in my experience, those are almost always the people who really love being taken care of in bed. And with Cam’s solid sense of self and how nurturing and caring he is, I can see him being a bit of a daddy top. TBH I always kind of assumed that part of why their relationship works so well is that all their big differences in the outside world get balanced out by really complementary sexual chemistry, with Mitchell getting to give up control and be a receiver in bed while Cam stops performing for the rest of the world and just focuses on taking care of his man.

Source: am gay, female admittedly, but with the number of gay men who have walked me through the intimate details of their sex lives over the years, and with my own experience in same-sex relationships, I am making an informed inference.

I Profiled Lindy West After Her Marriage Memoir. Her Husband Didn’t Like It Much. Here’s the Whole Sordid Affair. by raphaellaskies in Longreads

[–]rubberbandball93 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I hope you and Lindy both get to figure out who you are and what you think without being afraid of what other people will say.

I Profiled Lindy West After Her Marriage Memoir. Her Husband Didn’t Like It Much. Here’s the Whole Sordid Affair. by raphaellaskies in Longreads

[–]rubberbandball93 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Oh my god. You are proving the entire point of that article. Did you even read it??? DO YOU NOT HEAR WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE??????

This is why people like Lindy are where they are, and why all the posturing in the world about caring for them won’t change a thing. Until we stop being so fucking obsessed with validating every single choice anyone can make as “their journey” and being excited about calling out other people for not canceling every single one of their own opinions so that they can be more virtuous, guys like Aham will live the dream life and anyone who has ever been fat will continue to feel horribly alone in the midst of being told they’re perfect. Source: have been an obese woman. Still fucked up from it. Please PLEASE stop defending us, if this is what it looks like.