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Menopausal rage, erotic power and gaga feminist possibilities

“…Five of the books considered are printed by Dutch-language publishers in Belgium (Depypere and Vanherpe, 2019;Peeters, 2019;Prenen, 2017;Steyaert, 2019Steyaert, [2011; Van Lierop, 2016) and four by publishers in the Netherlands (De Vries and Kerkhof, 2020;Oomen, 2017;Rozenbroeck and Teunis, 2016;Thooft, 2018Thooft, [2015). All authors seem to belong to the Dutch-speaking white ethnic majority in the two countries, and all but one are women.…”

“…All authors seem to belong to the Dutch-speaking white ethnic majority in the two countries, and all but one are women. Six of the authors are (para)medical experts (De Vries and Kerkhof, 2020;Depypere and Vanherpe, 2019;Peeters, 2019;Rozenbroeck and Teunis, 2016;Steyaert, 2019Steyaert, [2011; Thooft, 2018Thooft, [2015); three are 'experts by experience', and more particularly women who have recently gone through the change yet are relatively well-known in the Dutch-speaking regions as writer (Oomen, 2017), musician (Van Lierop, 2016) or media figure (Prenen, 2017).…”

“…Four of the books in this study (Peeters, 2019;Prenen, 2017;Steyaert, 2019Steyaert, [2011; Thooft 2018Thooft [2015) mainly draw on spiritual repertoires. They tend to depict the change as a natural life transition, not to a worse but a better state of being, yet that nevertheless constitutes 'a crisis situation' that is 'dramatic', 'revolutionary' and a phase in life that requires '(self-)healing '.…”

“…That's not self-evident, because our culture still expects women to suppress their own aspirations for as long as possible, and preferably forever. (p. 14) Lisette Thooft (2018[2015), a writer and coach from the Netherlands, writes, That's what it's all about: own wisdom [eigen wijsheid], and if you want to join the two words together, that's even better [in Dutch eigenwijsheid means 'headstrongness']. The process has started because you are losing your fertility and thus your 'market value', and that's just difficult to digest, or even painful.…”

“…The books that use a spiritual language, conversely, emphasise the positive effects of ageing on women's sexuality, and attribute to ageing women the possibility to transform into wise women or goddesses and to acquire increased erotic power. Prenen (2017), Steyaert (2019[2011) and Thooft (2018Thooft ( [2015) point to the growing assertiveness of ageing women and argue that menopausal women tend to be no longer prepared to please their husbands; on the contrary, they start to articulate what they want or even become angry about the subservient role they are assumed to play. Steyaert makes reference to the archetype of the Wise Old Woman or Witch, who has liberated herself of what society demands from her.…”