Three Women - Drei Frauen

It took me a long time to fall asleep last night. I had gotten through the first of each of the Maggie, Lina and Sloane chapters.

I am not interested in judging women for what they want, who they want to sleep with, what sex acts they're cool with. I actually love talking to other women about sex. What bothered me was that, in these first few chapters, nothing was about what any of these women wanted.

And so, less than 20% into the book, I'm asking myself ... who was clamoring for this book? Why this “research”? For eight years of research or whatever she did, why was this the result?

Taddeo has a way of writing that makes me not believe what she's telling me. It's like it was written to be both titillating and give you a sensual-floaty feeling in your brain in the way she writes, but I'm really uncomfortable, at page 58, with all three of these stories, as well as Taddeo's own story of her mother. She victim-blames her own mother! And then asks if maybe her mother actually liked being followed home by a masturbating creeper every single day!

I am disturbed by the idea that Lina's gang rape is not called out as rape, just because her inner monologue is that she wants people to like her and she's been too heavily drugged to remember much of the experience.

I am trying to articulate how much Sloane's story bothered me, because it kind of snuck up on me. And like I said, I am not judging what she wants at all. What really messed with my head was what she obviously didn't want, and that was for her husband to actually have sex with someone else.

...suddenly Sloane's husband was behind this other woman ... and something inside Sloane stopped. ... She could feel it, her actual soul melt out and skitter from the room. ... Sloan was confused; it had been a fantasy of hers to watch her husband fuck another woman, one she'd never quite expressed out loud ... . Suddenly now it felt terrifically wrong. In the near future, she would fantasize about Richard fucking the girl and it would turn her on, but for now she felt she was leaking out from the inside. ... There was no going back. Even in the most complex of conjured realms, Sloane could not imagine a time machine convincing enough to take them back from this.

And I'm just ... not comfortable with this at all. Because even though Richard stopped to make sure his wife was okay, and she clearly wasn't, they didn't stop what they were doing. During sex is not the best time to set boundaries, so I wish that he'd stopped and sent the girl away so they could talk about it. That's the only way I can imagine this third of the story having anything to do with what Sloane herself actually desires.

I'm unsettled.
I didn't want to keep reading after that.
I don't need to be reading this.