TERF rhetoric, a bunch of stuff that screamed “crunchy to alt-right pipeline”, and a whole lot of privilege that she is unable/unwilling to acknowledge. Just no.

She mentioned that she was interested in the experiences of trans/non-binary people and how they fit into things but said she didn’t have much knowledge about it. All good. But then she goes on to defend a TERF (Kathleen Stock), spout gender and biological essentialism, and basically says, “Well, both sides are bad”.

She also inserts a story about her doctor friend and how medicine is bad (?). That story also held a lot of unpacked privilege. Basically, her friend went through menopause and wanted to move back to nature and away from medicine and doing things that she disagreed with and knew were wrong, and so she moved to a farm. Great. There was more to the wording that specifically bothered me, but I was listening to the audiobook (because that's what my library had), and I don't want to try and go back and search it out.

There is another point where she is talking about a large rock being washed away. Specifically, one that she had decided was the bed of a mythical old woman figure from local legend. After she left the island it got washed away into the sea. She says (paraphrased), “I used to believe in science and be a sceptic, and that could be possible naturally, but no, it actually couldn’t”. I’m all for spirituality and belief in myth and legend, but that really gave crunch to alt-right. If you don’t know, it basically is the link between the “no chemicals, natural life, original”, aka crunchy lifestyle and becoming conservative and alt-right.

That is another reason that her ignorance of her privilege and willingness to spew transphobic rhetoric bugged me. This is kind of giving alt-right covered up a bit. Kind of like white supremacist obsession with Viking and Celtic symbols. I am not saying that she is a white supremacist, I am saying she should reflect as to why she sounds like them.

Overall, I would not recommend this. While it does have some good stories about women and some good ideas about how to embrace ageing, it is also concerning and leaning toward dangerous ideas.