Skip to main content

New top story from Time: Lisa Taddeo Is Exposing the Raw Reality of Women’s Sexual Desires and Traumas

https://ift.tt/3bYJjRi

I meet Lisa Taddeo at the Central Park Zoo. The location is a rather ham-fisted allusion to the title of her new novel Animal, though the book has little to do with actual animals and everything to do with women and trauma and the animalistic responses trauma might trigger. But it serves as a cheery locale for the first interview either of us has done in-person for months. Taddeo is wearing a blue jumpsuit with her name stitched across the pocket, the kind that chefs wear in kitchens, and oversize sunglasses. Her husband and six-year-old daughter, carrying a stuffed fox, have tagged along.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Still, I realize that my gambit may have been ill-conceived as Taddeo and I try to seek out corners to talk about her book, which is not PG. We whisper words like “rape” and “murder-suicide” and “miscarriage” as toddlers waddle by us. Taddeo has built a reputation for taking on taboos. Her 2019 debut book, Three Women, explored the sex lives of three real women: a teenager who entered a relationship with her teacher and later reported him to the police; a housewife whose husband won’t kiss her who embarks on an illicit affair; a woman who has sex with other men in front of her husband to turn him on. The book, which debuted at number one on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, evoked pearl-clutching responses from certain critics unused to discussing women’s primal urges, particularly when those urges involve liaisons or threesomes. If there is a common theme to be found in Three Women, it’s that each woman’s desires are in some way defined and manipulated by the desires of the men around them—and often marked by pain.

Taddeo’s debut novel, written largely during the eight-year-span when she was reporting Three Women, is a logical extension of the nonfiction account. She believed that readers would consider her Three Women subjects unsympathetic if she included certain confessions they made in interviews. One experienced suicidal ideation, and when Taddeo mentioned that to friends they reacted in horror: “They’d say, ‘Oh, that’s despicable. She’s a mother,’” Taddeo says. “Animal was a holding ground for those stories. And it’s kind of the median of the trauma that I witnessed.”

If the experiences of Joan, the protagonist of Animal who suffers through several traumas both sexual and violent, can be called the median, then Taddeo, it seems, has heard a lot of horrific stories. “Median is maybe not the right word,” she concedes. “But I saw a lot worse, and I saw a lot better.”

The book is saturated with anguish—its marketing materials proudly tout the phrase, “I AM DEPRAVED.” Joan enters several bad and even dangerous relationships with men. After one of them kills himself in front of her, she packs up and moves from New York to Los Angeles in pursuit of a woman whom she believes holds a key to resolving some of her past trauma. In California, she faces oppressive heat and more controlling men, moving closer to snapping with each passing day. We know from the start that she will be driven to murder—it’s written on the book’s jacket. The only question is which jerk will fall victim.

In the years following the MeToo movement, the question of what happens to abusers remains murky—in real life, some have been jailed, others have made comebacks. Many faced no real consequences. And the question of what happens to survivors remains almost entirely unexplored. How a survivor, particularly if they haven’t seen restitution, moves on from the pain seems a ripe area of study for artists.

Animal is one of several recent works of fiction that explores the wronged-woman vengeance fantasy. Promising Young Woman, which won writer-director Emerald Fennell best original screenplay at the 2021 Oscars, posed its protagonist (Carrie Mulligan) as an avenging angel. Michaela Coel’s mesmerizing HBO series I May Destroy You did the hard work of exploring a woman’s life after she’s date raped: Coel’s character imagines how another encounter with her rapist might end, playing out the vengeful ending but also more empathetic versions.

Animal also indulges in killer fantasies, but the hero’s main quest is to connect with the woman in California who may hold a secret to mysteries from Joan’s early life. That friendship is the driving engine of the plot and, Taddeo poses, the place where women are most likely to heal. During the years she spent on the road reporting Three Women, the author noticed that the women she interviewed were often scared to share their true sexual desires with their female friends, fearing their judgment. “With #MeToo we finally told men what we didn’t want anymore,” she says. “But we are still afraid to tell other women, to tell our friends, what we do want.”

Author Lisa Taddeo
Molly Matalon for TIMELisa Taddeo shot to literary fame chronicling women’s sex lives in the 2019 nonfiction book ‘Three Women.’

Figuring out what, exactly, women do desire—and how much of that desire is defined by pain—has been the driving force behind Taddeo’s recent work. It hasn’t been easy. When Taddeo got the publishing contract for Three Women a decade ago, she had pitched the nonfiction work as a modern update on the legendary Gay Talese’s book on sex and desire, Thy Neighbor’s Wife. Taddeo asked Talese for reporting advice and any tips on how to get her subjects to open up about the most intimate, embarrassing and at times painful parts of their lives. He agreed to meet several times.

“We met, we talked, and he was like, ‘If you don’t use real names, you’re a hack,’ and I’m going, ’Oh, sh-t,’” she says. So for the first two years of her reporting, Taddeo told people she would have to use their real names—changing her mind only when she realized the consequences for her subjects could be much greater than the consequences had been for Talese’s. When he published Thy Neighbor’s Wife in 1980, there was no internet. “You could say someone’s last name in Ohio, and you wouldn’t be able to look them up.” In an email, Talese writes that he advised Taddeo to “resist the temptation to allow subjects to present their views without standing behind what they were saying,” but that her decision to use pseudonyms was “no bother to me, and I was only pleased that her book became a big success.”

Taddeo took magazine and newspaper assignments while working on Three Women and Animal. For one story, a profile of a high-priced sex worker, she invited Talese out to dinner with the subject. “He was asking her questions like, ‘How much for a hand job?’ And she’s like, whatever her price was for an overnight—let’s say, $2,000,” Taddeo says. “It was just rapid-fire questions.” She left the dinner a bit deflated. “I went home thinking I’m not a good reporter, because I can’t talk to people like that,” she says. “It’ll take me three hours to get to ask them a question about their sex life.” Talese writes that he believed the purpose of his presence to be to ask questions and that he might have been more subtle if he were interviewing the woman himself.

While reporting, Taddeo was careful not to call her subjects too much, not to be too invasive. But she would follow in their footsteps, visiting a diner where one woman went on a date in the minutes after she left, taking in the ambiance for the book.

In the two years since Three Women came out and became a hit, Taddeo has checked in with her main subjects on a regular basis. In all three cases, she had documented moments when the women were victims, to varying degrees, of misogyny, whether they were preyed on by men, denied an identity independent of men or unfairly judged for their sexual desires in a way that a man would never be.

Unlike Joan in Animal, the real women in Three Women have not responded to pain with rage or vengeance. They’ve begun the hard work of forging new paths in life. Taddeo now says that “Maggie,” the woman who testified in a trial that her teacher preyed on her when she was a high schooler, is attending graduate school in Chicago and consulting on the Three Women adaptation for Showtime. “Lina” has moved on from both her ex-husband and the man she had an affair with to another relationship. “Sloane” has had a more difficult time with the book’s success. She lives in a small community where gossip travels quickly, and of Taddeo’s three main characters, she was most concerned about being identified. “We didn’t realize that the book was going to be widely read,” says Taddeo. “If I had, I probably wouldn’t have talked to Sloane.”

Though Taddeo most often cites the subjects of Three Women as the inspiration for Animal, she also draws much of the protagonist’s suffering from her own life. Joan is an orphan left adrift in the world after a great tragedy; Taddeo lost her parents in quick succession in her 20s—her mother to illness and her father in a car accident. And Joan struggles with the memory of her mother, an Italian immigrant who wasn’t much for public displays of affection; Taddeo is still reckoning with her immigrant mother’s “tough sh-t” parenting sensibility.

And then there’s Animal’s graphic scene of a miscarriage. True to the book’s title, it’s animalistic. The raw emotion in the scene was inspired by Taddeo’s own experience. She found out she was pregnant in an RV in Montana, while she and her now-husband were traveling across the country as she wrote Three Women. They hadn’t planned on a baby, but they welcomed the news.

And then she lost the pregnancy. The miscarriage lasted three days. “It was just awful. And I felt so alone because he couldn’t understand. I still think about that loss,” she says. It wasn’t until Taddeo opened up about the incident to other women that she discovered miscarriage is common. “The second you say, ‘I had a miscarriage,’ everyone else is like, ‘Oh my God, me too,’” she says. “We don’t talk about it enough.”

For Taddeo, that loss represented a larger problem that women face in their lives: feeling as if they are responding to trauma in all the wrong ways, when really there’s no correct way to cope. “A woman has to always try to wonder what the actual perfect, best, right thing to do is in order to be able to tell other women, ‘I did the right thing,’” she says. She starts to tell the story of a friend who miscarried and flushed the fetus down the toilet, then trails off.

Taddeo has no problem channeling this type of pain into her work. But she struggles with whether and how to talk about it with her daughter. She has found in her reporting that women’s lives, intimate and otherwise, seem to always be influenced by those of their mothers—what the mothers did and didn’t suffer, what the daughters do and do not know about it.

One day her daughter was throwing a tantrum, tossing popcorn in the back of the seat of their car, and threw a handful in Taddeo’s face, forcing her to swerve. “I pulled the car over and was like, ‘Do you want to know how my father died?’” she says. It wasn’t until later, cuddling in bed, that Taddeo’s daughter began to wonder aloud about the accident. “The only reason she knew that is because I am such a traumatized a–hole,” she says.

Taddeo’s women—fictional and real—seem doomed to not only experience trauma but also to inherit the traumas of their parents. The subjects of Three Women often think of their mothers’ happy or failed relationships before embarking on romances of their own. In Animal, Joan spends the entire book connecting her personal sexual trauma to memories of her parents’ marriage. Taddeo’s bold presentation of female trauma is utterly at odds with her maternal desire to protect her child from pain. And she’s trying to find a way to break the cycle. Recently, when her daughter called a playground mishap “the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Taddeo thought, “Thank God. I just don’t want to f-ck her up.”

If you or someone you know may be contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Destination San Francisco: Muni Gets You to All the Sights

Destination San Francisco: Muni Gets You to All the Sights By 39 Coit servicing Coit Tower at Telegraph Hill – one of the routes that will be returning in August 2021 as part of Muni’s next service changes. San Francisco is reopening and the  SFMTA is supporting economic recovery by providing Muni access to 98% of the city.  By August 2021, a majority of our pre-COVID routes will be back in service connecting residents and visitors with world-class shopping and dining experiences, off-the-beaten-path local flare, diverse neighborhoods and almost boundless outdoor activities.  Shops, Markets & Dining in Diverse Neighborhoods  Virtually every neighborhood in San Francisco has its own boutique shopping and dining experiences, as well as unique farmers markets showcasing local shops and amenities....

How Improving Muni Also Makes Life Better for Drivers

How Improving Muni Also Makes Life Better for Drivers By Andrea Buffa Photo credit: We Ride Australia If you mostly drive to get around San Francisco, you may be wondering, “what has the SFMTA done for me lately?” San Francisco is a “ transit first ” city, so at the SFMTA we focus our resources on making it easier for San Franciscans to get around by public transit as well as by biking, walking and personal mobility device. While it may seem like adding transit lanes and protected bike lanes doesn’t have anything to do with driving, in fact, it does.  Since San Francisco doesn’t have room to give more space to roads, we have to change the way we use the limited space on our existing streets. (Not that adding more roads reduces traffic anyway – check out this article .) City Traffic Engineer Ricardo Oleo puts it this way: “When you have a city like San Francisco that was built with density in mind, having everyone drive is not a viable option. There’s not enough room to have th...

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility By Pamela Johnson Parking at any of our 22 city-owned facilities is now easier and safer than ever. Late last month we completed the Parking Access Revenue and Control Systems (PARCS) project. This four-year effort replaced aging parking equipment with modern technology and significant operational upgrades. Customer using new PARCS kiosk at North Beach parking garage Patrons will notice enhanced lighting, new wayfinding signs, audible alarms, cameras, gate arms, and payment machines with two-way digital intercoms . Behind the scenes is an all-new parking management system and 24/7 command center, connected to every machine. Can’t find your ticket to pay for parking?  No worries! Thanks to license plate recognition technology, cameras located at every facility’s entrance capture patrons’ plate numbers as they arrive . If a customer loses her ticket, the manager is able to re-issue a ticket based on her license plate...

Last Chance - 2022 Muni Service Network Survey Closes October 1, 2021

Last Chance - 2022 Muni Service Network Survey Closes October 1, 2021 By Mariana Maguire SFMTA staff talks with customer about 2022 Muni service options at farmer’s market pop-up event. The SFMTA recently introduced three options for increasing Muni service in early 2022. We launched efforts to get community input on them, including a brief survey that closes Friday, October 1. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, there are still a few days left! You can find the survey link at SFMTA.com/2022Network. We’ve received more than 4,000 survey responses so far and a few hundred calls to our hotline and feedback to our TellMuni@SFMTA.com email. You can also provide feedback on the shortened J Church route and changes to the 23 Monterey, 57 Parkmerced, 35 Eureka and 48 Quintara/24th Street by contacting TellMuni@SFMTA.com or 415.646.2005. All three alternatives to increase Muni bus service in early 2022 have the same amount of total bus service – they’re just arranged differently. Th...

Sunday Streets Returns October 17, with Phoenix Day

Sunday Streets Returns October 17, with Phoenix Day By Pamela Johnson For 13 years, the SFMTA and Livable City have brought "Sunday Streets" to San Francisco neighborhoods. Sunday Streets encourages communities to transform miles of car-congested streets into car-free spaces for neighbors to gather, kids to play, and for organizations and businesses to connect. On October 17, 2021, after more than 18 months of Covid-related shutdowns, Sunday Streets Phoenix Day will again bring free recreational activities, resources, and fun to the streets for tens of thousands of San Franciscans to enjoy. While Sunday Streets was celebrated in one neighborhood at a time in the past, this year's Phoenix Day spans various districts in the City for a simultaneous celebration of community, health, and resilience. This year's theme is "One City. One day. Rising together.”  Highlights this year include historic Sunday Streets SF routes, a 20+ mile community bike ride, three neighb...

Muni Service Changes Starting June 13

Muni Service Changes Starting June 13 By Mariana Maguire Beginning Saturday, June 13, the SFMTA will increase Muni service and frequency, add select routes into service and extend some current routes to continue to support essential trips. A key goal of these service increases is to support the community’s economic recovery by providing more connections to neighborhood commercial districts as businesses begin to reopen. We are also adding more frequent service on targeted routes to help address crowding and improve onboard physical distancing. These service changes will improve transit access through Chinatown, SoMa and the Excelsior neighborhoods, identified by the Muni’s Service Equity Strategy as neighborhoods that rely on transit service the most based on the percentage of households with low incomes, private vehicle ownership and race and ethnicity demographics. Although Muni continues to be for essential trips only, many people have no choice but to use transit to r...

New top story from Time: ‘We’re Nowhere Close to the Deal’. Coronavirus Aid Package Talks Break Down as Trump Rejects Help for Cities

https://ift.tt/3098lHW WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday dismissed Democratic demands for aid to cash-strapped cities in a new coronavirus relief package and lashed out at Republican allies as talks stalemated over assistance for millions of Americans. Another lawmaker tested positive for the virus. Republicans, beset by delays and infighting, signaled a willingness to swiftly approve a modest package to revamp a $600 weekly unemployment benefit that’s running out. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., roundly rejected that approach as meager, all but forcing Republicans back to the negotiating table. Without action, the aid expires Friday. “We’re nowhere close to the deal,” said White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. He said they’re “miles apart.” Stark differences remain between the $3 trillion proposal from Democrats and $1 trillion counter from Republicans, a standoff that is testing Trump and Congress ahead of the November election and putting...

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...

FOX NEWS: 6-year-old girl died after theme park ride operators failed to buckle her in: report A new report revealed the apparent cause of a tragic accident at a Colorado theme park earlier this month.

6-year-old girl died after theme park ride operators failed to buckle her in: report A new report revealed the apparent cause of a tragic accident at a Colorado theme park earlier this month. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/39Ix5eg

Residents Overwhelmingly Support Slow Streets

Residents Overwhelmingly Support Slow Streets By Eillie Anzilotti After over a year of Slow Streets providing safe, low-volume corridors for people to walk, bike, play and travel during the pandemic, we’re excited to share our first comprehensive evaluation of the program . The key takeaway? San Franciscans are overwhelmingly in support of Slow Streets. Slow Streets are designed to limit through traffic on certain residential streets and allow them to be used as a shared roadway for people traveling by foot and by bicycle. Since introducing Slow Streets in April 2020 in response to the Mayor’s Emergency Health Order, SFMTA has designated around 30 corridors covering 47 miles of roadway as Slow Streets. The program has evolved from a critical component of San Francisco’s pandemic response and recovery to a potential new avenue to further the city and SFMTA’s goals around climate action and sustainable transportation. As the Slow Streets program has grown, we wanted to make sure we...