Hags: 'eloquent, clever and devastating' The Times

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Whilst there are some interesting observations, I cannot continue - Wolf comparing Covid 19 jabs to mass murder, & the biological woman beliefs of Rowling amongst many other things. Bheur : The unrivaled masters of winter witchcraft, bheur hags were blue-skinned beldames that made cold seasons even harsher than normal. They were cold-hearted crones who reveled in the greed that bad conditions brought out. [2] There is something very off-putting from the tone of the writing too. A very "I'm not like other girls because I dare to..." etc without any self reflection with how that comes across. There's critique of skin care and makeup but it's not really in depth. A lot of skin care is a farce but the epidermis is our largest organ and requires some form of care? Instead of focusing her critique to that of anti-aging BS she just slams skin care as a whole? Her arguments are both narrow but general and shallow? It's wild how terrible this book is when there is so much that you could build decent arguments around. Smith also notes the disregard for older women’s wisdom accrued from moving through the world and navigating the many obstacles in their path, which is often seen as at odds with the more enlightened values of younger people. For instance, a middle-aged woman might reasonably express reservations at the notion that hair-pulling and choking by a man during sex signifies liberation, on account of her 40 or so years watching the goalposts being shifted around sex and sexual abuse for the gratification of men.

Making sure that we offer the books our customers want to read is the basis of good bookselling and good service means treating all our customers with respect and for them to feel welcome to choose the books they want.” Psychologists call this pattern of thought “splitting”: situating exaggerated good or bad traits in one individual or group to avoid confronting them elsewhere, a form of compartmentalisation that allows us to maintain a comfortably familiar view of the world and our place in it. This splitting by young women is mirrored by splitting on the level of the whole of society. Smith argues that the middle-aged woman “becomes a repository of sorts”, representing and thus containing many of our fears about the inevitability of dependency, infirmity and death. Given their nature as an all-female race, hags had to find other ways to reproduce beyond the conventional methods. There were many tales of the bizarre means through which hags came into the world; some stories reported that they spawned from animals, like cows with venomous milk or snake eggs kissed by virgins, while other processes were more artificial, like being incubated in the coffins of the unhallowed or being poured out from cauldrons of boiling blood. [8] One of the most widely told tales of hag reproduction had to be that of the changeling. [7] [10] Changeling [ ]Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Christopher Perkins (2014-09-30). Monster Manual 5th edition. Edited by Scott Fitzgerald Gray. ( Wizards of the Coast), pp. 176–179. ISBN 978-0786965614. Smith writes of “the spite that arises when men deem us to have served our purpose and wonder why we are still here”.

James Wyatt (October 2001). Oriental Adventures (3rd edition). ( Wizards of the Coast), pp. 147–148). ISBN 0-7869-2015-7. Can't wait to read this. Victoria Smith is one of the best feminist writers around. Also, you can watch her talk about her book next Friday at a free online event:Another claimed method was even more direct, the use of magic to swap their spawn with those of other races while the original child was still in the womb, supposedly killing the mother, asleep at the time of the switch, at birth. This claim seemed more superstition than the others and had never actually been proven, although given hag access to weird magic it was difficult to put anything past the ability of their rotten witchery. [2] [5] [10] The Change [ ] Hags were curious about other beings of power, including other hags, dragons, fiends, genies, and sometimes even mortals of great power, and had some small sliver of respect for those with accurate knowledge of such beings. Given their magical and political prowess, dangerous beings might be under a hag's sway, whether returning a favor or paying off a supernaturally enforced blood debt. [2] Hags were known to put themselves in servitor positions, offering their dark knowledge to powerful evil entities, but whether as oracles or simple advisors they were typically unfaithful to their masters if presented with a chance to usurp. [3] [13] Conversely, the heinous deeds of hags earned them powerful enemies, good-aligned dragons and giants being known to hunt them and kill them if given the chance. [5] Mortals [ ] It was a common belief of some that there were only five kinds of hags, a misconception. Another unknown fact to many was that hags were able to undergo a metamorphosis so as to change into other subraces of hags. The reasons for why could be anything, some believing that by changing into every type of hag they could become something greater by the end. There were also several ways to gain access to the transformation, some hags simply living long enough to do it through force of will over time, and others using certain resources, perhaps a ritual or coven, to speed the process up. [2] History [ ] At the end of the ritual, the life essence of all hags in the coven was bound to the eye, allowing all members to see what the eye could see so long as it was on the same plane as them, the eye being able to see in the dark. Superficially, a hag's eye appeared as a semiprecious stone but a truesight revealed its true form as a monstrous, disembodied eye. Hag eyes weren't particularly difficult to destroy, and doing so caused all hag's in the coven great mental anguish as well as temporarily blinding at least one of them for an entire day. Creating a new one first required at least a day for the blinded coven mate to recover and had to be done at least three days after the eye was destroyed, some reports stating they could only make one once per month. [1] [4] [5] [10]