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“... potential and let her true self emerge from the shadows. This is one of the masking patterns which Wendy Doniger discusses in her fascinating book, a sequel to The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade (2000). From an impressively wide range of sources, from Hollywood movies to Indian myths, she selects stories of women (and occasionally men) who use ...”

“... history is also noticeably weak: there have been no attempts at a ‘scientific’ edition. Wendy Doniger is just the person to tackle this text. Just as Karņa, the undervalued hero in the Mahābhārata, was born with armour embedded in his skin, making him all but impervious to spears and arrows, so ...”

“... worth having from these forays have always had something to guide them other than myth itself. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty is prepared to face these dangers, and for part of her way she has a sturdy guide. Dreams, Illusion and Other Realities is a difficult book to describe. It is in part a work of learning – very rich and generous learning at ...”

“... If anyone knows about the allure of hair it’s little girls. Between the ages of seven and twelve, girls groom their Barbies and each other with an intensity bordering on the freakish. At least they did in my day. Among the females in my class at primary school, hair-styling, or, more accurately, hair-fondling, was far and away the playground pursuit of choice ...”

“... insider knowledge.* Proverbial wisdom cuts both ways. Consider the gender of the gnome that Wendy Doniger puzzles over throughout her book The Bedtrick: ‘In the dark all cats are grey.’ In a sense Schipper’s rubric actually serves to reduce the attention she pays to the vicious inequalities listed in these proverbs – wife-beating, despair ...”

“... printing, television and movies have glorified the Ramayana and Mahabharata. In the late 1980s, as Wendy Doniger noted, ‘the streets of India were empty (or as empty as anything ever is in India) during the broadcast hours’ of B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharata TV series.* Its scriptwriter was an Indian Muslim, Rahi Masoom Raza.In 2016 the Ministry of ...”

“... manner were graceful; his disciples seldom had even the ponderous grace of Disney’s elephants. Wendy Doniger told me later that she’d danced with Derrida and that he was ‘a fantastic dancer’.Sunday, I went to a buffet supper where Derrida, in striped shirt and tie, looked even more elegant, and once again exhibited his warmth, openness and ...”

“... scholars were invited to reply to Coetzee – Marjorie Garber, Peter Singer, Barbara Smuts and Wendy Doniger – and all of them struggled in different ways to read his meanings. Singer seemed to suggest that Coetzee’s device was fundamentally evasive. ‘It’s a marvellous device, really. Costello can blithely criticise the use of reason, or the ...”

“... getting down with Fluffy. Could he be? So what if he is? And what does Fluffy make of it? (As Wendy Doniger wrote in the LRB in 1994, ‘What does the animal think about it?’ is ‘the most interesting question in the area of bestiality’.)Joanna Bourke’s Loving Animals is an exploration of the ethical possibilities and often grim reality of ...”