Just finished We Love You, Bunny and it was really… misogynist… am I wrong?

I added the Spoiler tag but really, this is all going to be spoilers for this book and the preceding book Bunny.

There’s a TL:DR

I know Mona Awad is a feminist satirist. I know she’s “the heir apparent” of Margaret Atwood, according to Atwood. I loved All’s Well and Rouge. That’s why I’m so confused by this book. Am I missing something? I must be, right? Because this was one of the most appallingly misogynist books I’ve read in a long time.

If anyone can help me see what I missing, I would be so grateful. (Or if you think I’m right and if this was by a guy it would be absolutely pilloried, I’d be interested to hear that too!)

So…

To prepare for reading it I reread Bunny. It’s a biting satire of MFA programs, and as someone who worked at a college with a prominent one I really enjoyed that part – but I was uncomfortable with the bunnies. Partly with having that kind of performative femininity with the braids and the dresses and the upspeak be an endless comedy target in itself, but also— especially— the ending where they are all turned against each other by being fucked by the same man, whom they all lose their minds over, who exposes them as frenemies… That part wasn’t great.

More “Mean Girls” than not.

But there are so many other things I love about the book. She writes so beautifully. You are on Samantha’s side throughout. So…

On to We Love You, Bunny

So this is a prequel, set the year before. Here we learn more about the bunnies and they are constantly presented as pathetic and evil objects of scorn – we are invited to mock their bulimia, horrific self-harming, their horrible treatment by their parents – but some of that isn’t funny?

Their friendship is also fake from the beginning, they all secretly hate each other, we all know these kinds of girly girls can’t be real friends.

Silly Girls Being Triggered
I was unpleasantly surprised when Awad went fullbore mocking students being “triggered” – honestly, it read like she was channeling Charlie Kirk. The scene where Coraline’s work is destroyed in the writing workshop and she cries in the garden and yes, hyperbolically says that she feels violated, and the other bunnies comfort her, is presented as something over the top and ridiculous— so stupid that almost all the men in the book make fun of it at one point or another.

As a reader, though, I didn’t have any trouble empathizing with Coraline in that moment. It’s would be awful to have that happened to you, people critiquing you whose names you hadn’t even learned yet, and I’m not sure about shaming her for holding it together in the workshop but crying afterward, and her friends hugging her? Why is that so stupid? Why are we supposed to agree with the men shaming her for that?

Women Just Need to Get Laid— And Older Women Are a Bit Gross

So they create a boy, Aereus, and then they have to hold onto him because of course they have no talent of their own. Despite the fact that I thought in both books their writing sounded kind of interesting, obviously you’re not supposed to think that. And these women are nothing without a man.

They’re not the only ones of course. Their teacher, Ursula, who is older, also has no talent without a male muse.

Did we need to describe the older woman as both “barren” and “withered”? Apparently.

So you have these women chasing this male muse all over the city. (The bunnies are actually also trying to keep him from committing murder, which seems like a good thing…? I mean, shouldn’t he be locked up?)

Men Are Wise and Creative

Let’s talk male characters.

We have Jonah, who is perfect, as in the first book.

We have Aereus, who is the male muse whom every woman in the book needs to take inspiration from and also wants to fuck desperately.

We have Allan, who was a predator in the first book, and a real asshole to his students in this one, but has deep and profound wisdom to impart because he doesn’t need a muse.

He’s a man. He’s creative all on his own.

And then we have the male poets who also keep Aereus as a muse, and here you might think they would be equivalent to the bunnies. But they are not. Masculinity is not in any way satirized. The poets are not shown to be fake friends. Their decor, food choices, histories, are never mentioned. They barely exist as characters, to be fair.

TL:DR What am I missing?

How is any of this, any of it at all, feminist? Am I supposed to be laughing at Coraline‘s self-harm or agree with the men shaming a girl for daring to cry after a brutal critique of her prose? How do I understand all the older men being brilliant artists but the older woman being “barren” and “withered” as a feminist statement?

If you know, let me know.