Paula Caplan's latest essay is about the book by feminist psychologist Phyllis Chesler, An American Bride in Kabul, which is based partly on the diaries she kept when, in 1961, at age 20, she -- from an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn -- fell in love with and married a man from a prominent family from Afghanistan and moved with him to Kabul. It's about what she learned there about the oppression of women, how she made a remarkable escape, what she subsequently learned about the context and history of what had happened to her, and how all of this helped impel her ardent feminist activism.
In the essay I also talk about how some people would have unreasonably claimed she somehow ought to have known that her husband would become instantly transformed, once back in Afghanistan, from the worldly, loving, artistic man she fell into love with into an unrecognizable figure who actively participated in controlling and restricting her. I write about my disagreement with that claim and connect it to a book I wrote long ago, The Myth of Women's Masochism.
The essay is also about a new book, Blind to Betrayal, by feminist psychologists Jennifer Freyd and Pamela Birrell, which is in an important sense a descendant of The Myth of Women's Masochism and in which they describe with great clarity and humanity the many understandable reasons -- not one of which is masochism -- that people, especially women, may for long periods of time fail to recognize the way individuals or institutions are betraying them.
Please read the essay here -- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-isnt-golden/201310/personal-nightmare-helped-shape-pioneer-feminist..
and check out these books! ... and let others know about them.
Thanks,
Paula paulacaplan@gmail.com
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