Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Reviews
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1966
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1967
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1971
- The Village Voice, September 9, 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1971
- College English, 33:3, December 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1972
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1973
- Village Voice, June 16, 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1974
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1976
- Frontiers, III:3, fall, 1978
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, April 1, 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 9, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
- The Feminist Review, #5 [in The New Women's Times, 5:14, July 16–19, 1979]
- Frontiers, IV:1, 1979
- Frontiers, IV: 2, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, January 24, 1980
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1980
- Sinister Wisdom, 12, winter 1980
- Frontiers, V:3, 1981
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 10, 1981
- Essays
- Letters
- Index of Books and Authors Reviewed
Frontiers, IV: 2, 1979
from Reviews
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Reviews
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1966
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1967
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1971
- The Village Voice, September 9, 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1971
- College English, 33:3, December 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1972
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1973
- Village Voice, June 16, 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1974
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1976
- Frontiers, III:3, fall, 1978
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, April 1, 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 9, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
- The Feminist Review, #5 [in The New Women's Times, 5:14, July 16–19, 1979]
- Frontiers, IV:1, 1979
- Frontiers, IV: 2, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, January 24, 1980
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1980
- Sinister Wisdom, 12, winter 1980
- Frontiers, V:3, 1981
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 10, 1981
- Essays
- Letters
- Index of Books and Authors Reviewed
Summary
The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. Dorothy Dinnerstein (Harper & Row, New York, 1976, 288pp., $3.95)
Dorothy Dinnerstein's The Mermaid and the Minotaur is not a popular book. It has crept into public notice relatively without ballyhoo. This statement is partly an excuse for writing a review, in 1979, of a book originally published in 1976 and out in paperback a year later, partly a criticism of reviewers (why didn't they sing under my pillow, flag my car down on the highway?), and partly praise for the Old Girls' network that stubbornly insisted on plugging it anyway (“Haven't you read …?,” “Maude says …,” “I found this book …”). The vocabulary of critical praise has become so inflated nowadays that when I read Sara Blackburn's comment on the back cover of MM that the intellectual excitement of reading Dinnerstein is comparable to that of reading early Freud, I merely “humphed,” and yet Sara Blackburn is telling the truth. Dorothy Dinnerstein's argument is so brilliant, so ingenious, so wide, so novel, and so obvious that I can't trust myself to do it justice, especially in a few paragraphs. What she has done is to unify biology, history, and psychology in the interest of explaining not “the cause” of sexism but its profoundest motivations in both men and women. In this union of Darwin, Marx, and Freud (so to speak) none is reduced to the status of epiphenomenon or made a “reflection” of any of the others. Dinnerstein has taken one very obvious fact and much of the not-so-obvious thought of the past century-and-a-half and fused the lot in a rare intellectual triumph. To recognize that sexism is not all force and fraud seems to leave as an alternative only the craven surrender to “biology” – or rather, the kind of quasi-biology that asserts that either women are genetically inferior or men genetically horrid. Dinnerstein goes beyond such silly-simple notions to a conclusion which produced in me all the embarrassing hilarity of finally discovering the haystack after you've spent decades looking for the needle in it. The things this book explains! For example, the uneasy, unstable co-existence of feminism with protest against class privilege – and why the latter has always been so much more visible (when visible at all) than the former…
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- The Country You Have Never SeenEssays and Reviews, pp. 160 - 164Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007