Seems like there might be enough traction, so here we go!
Our first “book” shall be “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K LeGuin.
It is a short story that is readily available online. If you cannot purchase it, rent it, or find it online please let me know and I will provide more information on how to get it.
Trigger warnings: emotional abuse, grooming, and child abuse
I would like to include some discussion questions that are community specific, and not generic book club questions, so these will likely be questions I ask regarding every work, subject to change of course.
Some things to think about while reading:
- Do you think this work is told from a feminist perspective? Why?
- Do you think the authors gender or gender identity affected their choice of subject, writing style, or perspective character?
- Does the narrators gender or gender identity affect the work? If so, how?
- Did this work change your opinion on anything? If so, what and why?
I don’t know if I’ll start adding generic book club questions, but if you’d like more general discussion questions of the works going forward, please let me know and I can include some. There’s just a lot of discussion available already for this specific piece and I don’t want answers to common questions to overshadow more nuanced discussions that center women which is why we’re all in this community. Also, this is not a homework assignment. You can choose to address any or none of the questions posed here, or talk about your general thoughts or whatever else. Please feel free to pose your own questions in the comments as well. These should serve as a handy springboard if needed, but not a mandatory outline.
Our first movie will be Kpop Demon Hunters. There were some other suggestions, but I wanted to keep it a little lighter considering this months book has some serious trigger warnings and I wanted people to be able to participate in at least one of the two, even if they would rather not engage in heavy topics. This is an animated movie available on Netflix. I know this is a little exclusionary, but there are some other ways to watch it as well.
Trigger warnings: animated violence/gore, discussion of demons and the afterlife
Same as above: I would like to include some discussion questions that are community specific, and not generic movie club questions, so these will likely be questions I ask regarding every work, subject to change of course.
Some things to think about while watching:
- Do you think this work is told from a feminist perspective? Why?
- Do you think the authors gender or gender identity affected their choice of subject, writing style, or perspective character?
- Does the narrators gender or gender identity affect the work? If so, how?
- Did this work change your opinion on anything? If so, what and why?
I don’t know if I’ll start adding generic questions, but if you’d like more general discussion questions of the works going forward, please let me know and I can include some. There’s just a lot of discussion available already for this specific piece and I don’t want answers to common questions to overshadow more nuanced discussions that center women which is why we’re all in this community. Also, this is not a homework assignment. You can choose to address any or none of the questions posed here, or talk about your general thoughts or whatever else. Please feel free to pose your own questions in the comments as well. These should serve as a handy springboard if needed, but not a mandatory outline.
Comments are spoilers territory. If you want to use spoiler tags in the comments, please do, but it is not required. If you venture into the comments please keep in mind this is a discussion thread for media so there will likely be spoilers.
Going forward This is a community project. I would like to get input regarding written works and tv/movies that would be a good fit for this. I will leave a comment on this thread that you can respond to if you’d like to offer a suggestion. One suggestion per comment please. You can comment multiple times though. I’d like to make sure the selections are widely accessible, so please add that information if you know for sure something is in the public domain or available online, as that makes it easier to recommend. Please vote on the other comments you see there. I’d like to pair heavier topics in one media with lighter topics in the other, just in case you’re wondering why a specific piece was not chosen. Things like language or availability may also affect the selection. I’m also open to changing or adding discussion questions.
Thank you all for your interest. Excited to hear your perspectives!
PS: Even if you have seen or read the media before, I would encourage a reread or rewatch to best participate in the discussion!
Wow! I didn’t want to read anybody’s comments prior to posting my own in case it would interfere with what I took away from it as a standalone text, but this is such great and interesting information.
Though in my comment I somewhat argued that it is not a fully feminist work, I definitely understand how it was written by a feminist and how that affected the content of it. I had no idea that she was a Daoist. I would be really interested to hear how that would affect her prescription for the way to “solve” the issue at the heart of the work. Obviously no solution is offered, but does she just consider it unsolvable at its very core? Are we all doomed to perpetuate injustice onto others until the end of time? I also understood it to be at least somewhat critical of those leave, and I had drawn a parallel between that and the 4B movement, with some obvious caveats. I wonder if removing yourself from the system while still somewhat participating in it as in the 4B movement would be viewed as better or worse from her perspective.  on the one hand, you are continuing to exist within the current framework, yet on the other hand you are rebelling against the framework and showing others something to emulate.
Thank you for that detailed history. It really adds additional layers to the work. 
I think part of LeGuin’s answer to the question of how you’d “solve” Omelas (symbolically: us) would be, in effect, to unask the question. She’d claim the question is meaningless.
Daoism isn’t a philosophy of directly solving things, after all. Direct action is, indeed, almost the polar opposite of what it suggests. I’ll quote from the tail end of one of the most inadvertently Daoist works of recent art that I’ve seen to explain the whole 自然/zì rán and 无为/wú wéi thing:
I’m not sure there’s a better way to explain the central concept of 阴阳/yīn yáng and the role of the Dao in navigating it available in English. 阴/yīn exists. 阳/yáng exists. One cannot exist without the other. Each is, in fact, defined by the other. All you can do in navigate with minimal effort, through atunement with the natural world, the ever-shifting boundaries of 阴阳/yīn yáng along the Dao (literally “path”) using the minimal effort for maximal effect that you can muster.
Learn to relax, to soften, and the dance becomes easier.
What a well balanced sentiment. I responded to Dandelion elsewhere in this thread, and though it was not explicitly about Daoism, this conclusion was present there as well. This concept of not being responsible for or antagonistic to the darkness and learning to navigate through while acknowledging it seems to be the only way forward at times, but the idea that no matter what we do, as either individuals or a society, we will not be able to excise the worst of ourselves still feels unsettling. For now, acknowledging and working toward being better has to be enough, but the thought that it will never get better on the balance of it seems defeatist. Maybe I am approaching from the wrong place here, but that doesn’t seem like a hopeful philosophy as much as a subsistence philosophy. Not that philosophy needs to be hopeful or inspiring, but it makes me sad to think people wake up every day and do their best while legitimately believing things on the whole will not or cannot improve. If I didn’t think that doing my best was contributing not just to balancing my worst, but to actually improving myself and the world, I don’t know if I’d be able to be so cheery about it. And I’m not particularly cheery about it to begin with lol.
Well the issue here is that I’m distilling 5000 years of philosophical thought founded on infamously opaque original text into a single message board post. There’s going to be some holes.
On top of that, I’m only beginning to get a grasp on the concepts myself, further straining the communications. 🤣
Lol, so valid. I really don’t know enough to make generalizations or anything, but at the very least it seems like a helpful framework for acknowledging our individual limits and encouraging the acceptance of our boundaries and possibly conflict complexity, which I think is very healthy. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective and understanding, and I promise not to be passing sweeping judgement on a whole philosophy based on this brief conversation lol.