Aimee Bulter

In Aimee Bender’s MFer, the main character is about a man who seems to pride himself and enjoy the fact that he has sex with women with children. At first, a feminist literary critic may see this work as being somewhat degrading to women. It could be seen as something that undermines the female gender for the story is about this man who seems to have this control over all these women and treats them whichever way he wishes. For example, a mother he had slept with calls him for advice about a problem she is having with her father and he abruptly interrupts her and rudely hangs up on her. Also with the main plot in the story, the man is in complete control of the female starlet, even though she is very famous and have other men who are too afraid of approaching her. It is interesting how even this strong woman who otherwise instill fear in other men is still able to be controlled by this man. In fact, she seems to enjoy this for she tells her friends how she likes how this man treats her “like a regular person” (Bender 81). Although all of this makes this story to seems like it undermines women, the end of the story seems to show otherwise. In the end, the man seems to be shackled down by his unwillingness to settle down with just one woman because even though he is completely attracted to the starlet, he refuses to call her back and sits in his lonely house watching her at an award show. The starlet, on the other hand, comes out somewhat more victorious for she ends up winning an award for her performance, even though it seems like she only won it because of the main characters help. And in the way the word “mfer” is almost redefined to not mean a curse but in fact is taken literally and means someone who has sex with mothers, this story may follow Showalter’s definition of a book with the woman as a writer for it deals with the “problem of a female language” (Showalter 147). In other words, this female author, Aimee Bender, redefines what it means for a man to be called a mfer and how this relates to not only the type of women he goes out with, but also with how he treats women poorly.