Apple

Woman as comestible. Woman as kingmaker. Woman as oblivion.

Why is our culture governed by the principle of separation? Beginning with a devastating exploration of the 1960s, understood up until now as the era of female liberation, free love and the tribal sharing of drugs, Antonella Gambotto-Burke deconstructs the past two centuries and shows how we are, in fact, moving towards the age of the Nietzschean übermensch, in which femininity will, if we do not change, be erased.

She skilfully draws together diverse threads, from the shockingly personal to the broadest societal trends and cutting-edge scientific research, to construct a brilliant and startling thesis that medicinal and recreational drugs have rewired our bodies and brains to an near-incomprehensible extent. Anxiety, artificial wombs, brutality, the class system, depression, dieting, racism and other issues – including the first plausible theory for rubber fetishism and other ‘kinks’ such as choking or breathplay – are explained within the context of the dominant cultural paradigm.

A devastating uppercut to a patriarchal ideology that has marred billions of lives, Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine completely revises our understanding of addiction, art, drug use, homosexuality, murder, pornography, sex, war, and, critically, the significance of birth, infancy and motherhood in relation to human existence.

You will never see anything the same way again.