Aimee Bender

            When reading Motherfucker by Aimee bender as a feminist critic, I thought of what Elaine Showalter wrote in Towards a Feminist Poetics. Showalter mentions there are two types of Feminist Criticism. The first type deals with “woman as the reader with woman as the consumer of male produced literature, and with the way in which the hypothesis of a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awakening us to the significance of its sexual codes.” The second type deals with “woman as the writer with woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres and structures of literature by women.” In the story the motherfucker would sleep with women of all types. “ He wined, dined, danced, romanced-martinis and kisses on the neck, bloody steak and pinot Noir- the word “beautiful” said sincerely with a casual lean-back into a booth. He asked pointed, particular questions. By midnight had most of them n bed, clothes off in a flash, the speed of a woman undressing changing rapidly over time, faster and faster, and he was a very good lover, attentive and confident, a giver and a taker, and the mothers lined up to see him, their babysitters growing rich, twenties stuffed in those tight teenage pockets.” He has his way with women and then after one or two times he stops calling. Then one day he met the starlet and started to talk to her at a party. They go out for lunch and dinner and he says good night to her and doesn’t kiss her goodbye. Then one night he has his way with her and the next morning while she is making breakfast for him he leaves and he never calls back. This is one way to look at the story in which the motherfucker was using women as his sexual objects and had control over them. Another way a feminist critic would look at it is that the starlet was a successful strong single mother and was in control while the motherfucker lived in his small plain apartment.