FemBookSoc: from hard law to TikTok

FemBookSoc raised the curtain on the new school year with a discussion of the moral quandaries posed by the National Theatre's smash hit, Inter Alia (pictured), a story of a judge whose principles are put to the test when her teenage son is accused of raping a girl at a party. The legal system and its fallibilities remained on the stand in Charlotte S's expert examination of how far the law is able to legislate against more insidious forms of gender discrimination.

From hard law, FemBookSoc turned to TikTok trends, specifically BookTok and the female performative reader, the latter a concept which Clemmie P acknowledged was far from new and had been derided by Jane Austen two centuries earlier in her famous defence of novels in Northanger Abbey.

Mia C was inspired by a holiday to Georgia to consider the authority of female figures in orthodox Christianity. While Emilie K delivered the almost obligatory perennial presentation on Sappho. The term ended with watching a so-called debate from the 1970s between Phyllis Schlafley, a so-called traditionalist, and Betty Friedan (an actual feminist and not a so-called one) on whether an amendment to the US constitution prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex should be ratified by State legislatures.

FemBookSoc meets on Mondays during Lunch 1 in SR7.