Marilyn Yalom

Theresa Donovan Brown

From historian and acclaimed feminist author of How the French Invented Love and A History of the Wife comes this rich, multifaceted history of the evolution of female friendship. In today’s culture, the bonds of female friendship are taken as a given. But only a few centuries ago, the idea of female friendship was completely unacknowledged, even pooh-poohed. Only men, the reasoning went, had the emotional and intellectual depth to develop and sustain these meaningful relationships. Surveying history, literature, philosophy, religion, and pop culture, acclaimed author and historian Marilyn Yalom and co-author Theresa Donovan Brown demonstrate how women were able to co-opt the public face of friendship throughout the years. Chronicling shifting attitudes toward friendship—both female and male—from the Bible and the Romans to the Enlightenment to the women’s rights movements of the ‘60s up to Sex and the City and Bridesmaids, they reveal how the concept of female friendship has been inextricably linked to the larger social and cultural movements that have defined human history. Armed with Yalom and Brown as our guides, we delve into the fascinating historical episodes and trends that illuminate the story of friendship between women: the literary salon as the original book club, the emergence of female professions and the working girl, the phenomenon of gossip, the advent of women’s sports, and more. Lively, informative, and richly detailed, The Social Sex is a revelatory cultural history.

A History of Female Friendship

The Social Sex

Freundinnen – jede Frau hat sie, jeder braucht sie. In der heutigen westlichen Welt gilt Freundschaft unter Frauen als Selbstverständlichkeit. Doch ein Blick zurück zeigt: noch vor einigen Jahrhunderten waren »Freundinnen« so gut wie unbekannt, Freundschaften unter Frauen waren verpönt. In der Antike galten Frauen als das schwache Geschlecht, nur Männer seien intellektuell und emotional fähig, wirklich tiefgehende Freundschaften zu entwickeln und zu pflegen. Und auch heute noch gibt es Kulturen, in denen Frauen keine eigenständigen Freundschaften pflegen dürfen. Anhand zahlreicher Quellen werfen Marilyn Yalom und ihre Co-Autorin Theresa Donovan Brown einen höchst informativen und unterhaltsamen Blick auf die Entwicklung und das Verständnis von Frauenfreundschaft im Wandel der Zeit: von der Bibel und den Römern bis zur Aufklärung, von der Frauenbewegung der 60er Jahre bis zu Sex and the City.

Eine Kulturgeschichte

Freundinnen

Colleen Fitzgerald’s career and personal life unravel when she learns that the man she loved, a fellow gold-stock analyst, has died under suspicious circumstances at a mine site. Taking over his research at the Summitville Mine in the mountains of southern Colorado, Colleen becomes enmeshed in the wiles of the mine’s dangerously charismatic operator who will do anything to make his mine succeed. On her quest to understand why her love died, Colleen confronts the cataclysmic forces building at the mine — Wall-Street-fueled lust for financing, a farming community that needs water, the toxic brew of heavy metals and cyanide spilling from the mine and poisoning that water, radical local-autonomy groups, and violent environmentalist renegades. Facing the devastation caused by the clash of these forces, Colleen learns to care about others again, and rediscovers hope the hard way.

Theresa Donovan Brown

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