Lee Hall

Gem from a brilliant thinker., July 11 2004

This book will forever redefine feminism for its readers.

There are two threads: one political, the other literary commentary. Fortunately, Witting pulls the former into the latter. The astute and radical political critique in Wittig's book is uniquely powerful.

Wittig addresses the question of how a movement is comprised of both group energy and individual experience. The theory, legacy, and limits of Marx and Engels are discussed.

Then, drawing on de Beauvoir and other iconoclasts, Wittig addresses our dominator culture in a way that goes directly to its core.

Wittig deals efficiently yet persuasively with the argument over whether nature or culture is responsible for… Read more

No sequel. Please., July 20 2003

Twenty years from now, the animal rights movement will be just as confused as it is now. That seems to be the message of this book, which takes place in the near future in which, for some reason that the author never gives, women are now called femen (when they are not being called babe, harlot, lady, girl, etc. -- we just never see the word "woman"). Their chief role in this story is to be "captured" by the "bravado" of the protagonist, a 19-year-old on roller skates who is "cool" because he did some time in the army where he knocked his teeth out, and who "marvels at the similarities between girls and birds."

The pulled teeth could be a metaphor for the remainder of the reader's… Read more

A Plea for Compassionate Enslavement, Jun 2 2003

Matthew Scully exclaims that vegetarianism should not be dismissed as "radical animal rights nonsense," given that vegetarians act consistently with the noble concepts from which human rights arise. But how ingenuously can human rights be cited as guideposts in a book that tells us how we ought to kill?

Yes, animal rights activists have extended the philosophy of human rights outward. But the book misses its own point: We do have concepts of human rights. We reject the continued enslavement of human beings outright. We make no exceptions for compassionate slavery.

Scully insists that only morality articulated in religious terms will carry the day, because "in America, it is worth… Read more