#thats not to say i find it particularly groundbreaking a feminist analysis of gender relations or anything?

[homophyte]

okay im going to be vulnerable and admit though ive owned house of leaves for a few months i was spurred to start reading it the other day after watching that video on myhouse.wad . no one make fun of me. that being said.

im not necessarily going though it super in depth and more just trying to unravel some stuff for funsies with some various help from old forums and what strikes me as sometimes glaringly missing from discussions on the book is the way it relates to women. like the fact that the house itself is treated as though it has a female identity will get talked about but theres not rlly discussions about the ramifications of that--how will and holloways posturing--named as explicitly about 'male dominance'--is essentially a fight over who gets to get the girl. wills early venture into the house is literally likened to karen kissing wax, like theyre BOTH infidelities, and thats not nearly the first time karen herself treats the situation like the house is her romantic rival or at least rival for wills attention (im not far enough in to have too solid a grasp on the implications of the name delial--but lets just say i have a suspicion?).

anyway whats maybe even more interesting than that is the way its kinda ALL about gender--its men who keep entering the house desperate to know what its about, its men driven to write about it and uncover its secret knowledge, and it drives them fucking crazy. like...you can read that--VERY EASILY--as men 'discovering' the ""hidden"" interiority of women, like, the very idea that women are complex people with their own ideas and emotions and inner worlds. the fact that the house has a secret inside is huge fucking news and just about every man in the novel reacts to it as such, but the reactions from women are like...not that. idk im not done with it by any means but the similarity between the conversations between karen & wax at the end ch VII and johnny & thumper at the end of VIII really apparent. when thumper is listening to johnny, seeking to understand him, being really invested and interested and not reacting with annoyance or disdain or boredom like he expects, it genuinely really knocks him out to the point he nearly cries--and then he bottles it up, writes it off, even when she echoes karens exact words flirting with wax he doesnt register it.

the text displays a consciousness around gendered expectations here, particularly bc thumper is a sex worker, that she cant be expected to intellectually engage w it, but she can and does...and then johnny doenst know what to DO about it, how to engage w a real moment of understanding between the sexes or whatever so he very consciously falls back on gender expectations for men and refuses to feel that connection, severing the tie he inadvertently built w her and consigning the moment to unknowable blackness. the void is invented by people determined to treat it as foreign--which often means treating it as hostile (holloways gun, johnnys suspicions when thumper didnt call him back).

that she ends with the comment 'you just need to get out of the house' is like...almost laughably on the nose especially w the way chauvanist culture has proliferated on the internet. like in the book too, dont get me wrong, its just so startlingly accurate to whats going on it seems like she really must UNDERSTAND in a way johnny fails to capture in his narration but still comes through due to her being kinda fucking great--sorry i REALLY like thumper in this actually she may be my favorite. its sort of difficult for me to look at the line and divorce it in my head from the phenomenon of the incel--read a certain way, you have johnny ranting and raving about how he just cant ever figure out what the collective 'woman' is thinking and all this time hes spent driving himself crazy about it, and thumper listening and understanding and very sympathetically and honestly saying 'that wouldnt be a big deal if you interacted w women instead of holing up inside trying to theorize about it.'

i dont necessarily think its a mistake that johnny is the kind of person he is, a partying womanizer or whatever, bc sex becomes his only interaction w women (his failure to talk abt the book w kyrie in favor or fucking her) just as entering the house becomes wills only interaction w it (or at least he rages when he cant have that interaction, he values it above others). the book is pretty clear about both of these acting as forms of penetration. as johnny gets more invested in the text he interacts more and more w the women zampano used as interpreters and comes more and more into contact w women and less and less able to deny their interiority.

the reaction from men that women are people is simple and plain disbelief, followed by disconnected, invasive, rigorous study, study that is likened to war, to surgery, to expedition--anything but understanding. its kind of baffling idk maybe im just not looking in the right place to see people talking about it but this sorta feels like...the point. hell even earlier in ch VII on page 91 you get will and holloway excitedly talking about calling the press about their huge discovery that no one will believe...and then just, karen, living her life, treated like an enigma. i literally have this written in my notes as "men discover women have internality; their wives decline to comment"

#myposts #thats not even to mention the uncanny similarities of the whalestoe letters to some stuff in the rest of the book #the intrusion of men the inability of men to understand women as a form of violence. etc #thats not to say i find it particularly groundbreaking a feminist analysis of gender relations or anything? #its more just like...hey where are the mediocre liberal feminists in talking about this this would totally be their thing #idk i very well might be just looking the wrong place #and again im not finished with it. so i could be dead fucking wrong #but at least rn its the main thing i keep seeing pop up over n over