The Pillow Talk Project

The Pillow Talk Project is dedicated to exposing systemic misogyny and its covert forms of manipulation in intimate relationships and day to day interactions. Through the creative use of story, art, and social media, we can draw attention to misogyny's negative messaging and manipulative strategies. Public awareness is the first step in creating and enforcing laws to protect women, girls, women of color, LGBTQ+, and non-binary individuals. Pillow Talk is focused on targeting and dismantling systems not individuals.

It includes :

• The PILLOW TALK book: A deeply personal account of the destructive role that misogyny has played in the narrator’s marriage and in the lives of the women in their family. It is a fictionalized representation of events that have happened to actual women. The mother’s teenage pregnancy, the sexual assaults, the incest, the psychological cruelty, and the physical abuse—these are common stories that all too often slip under the radar. The book is designed to accurately portray the lifelong sexual harassment and psychological manipulation that women have experienced in the United States, from mid-century to the present. In all of these cases, the men rarely, if ever, suffer negative consequences. On the contrary, the men, and sometimes the women, who populate Marissa’s day to day world, consistently use a range of misogynist strategies, that are so commonplace they go unnoticed and unchallenged. Marissa is dismissed, discredited, demoralized, silenced, intimidated, pressured, coerced, manipulated, gaslighted, blamed, and threatened, especially when Marissa tries to complain or resist this treatment. Before the age of twenty, Marissa’s been physically abused, sexually assaulted, sexually humiliated, impregnated by an older man, and brutally beaten by an ex-boyfriend. In most cases, but not all, Marissa's family and the authorities, protect the men involved. Time and again, the man's word is taken over Marissa's. On the contrary, Marissa is dismissed, ignored, shamed, labeled as crazy, and viewed as prone to exaggeration. Consequently, like so many women, Marissa internalizes misogyny’s negative messaging. During adolescence Marissa turns on themself. As self-hatred and shame slowly poison their psyche, Marissa enters a period of self-destructive behavior. This comes to an end when Marissa meets a therapist who recognizes the impact the history of abuse has had on the women in Marissa's family. From there on, Marissa, begins a slow, uphill climb towards healing and self-discovery, but continues to suffer one set back after another. Despite all of the growth and hard won self-awareness, Marissa’s unable to escape a succession of toxic relationships and traumatic life events. Convinced that the world is hopelessly unfair, Marissa starts to despair again. Finally, during the COVID pandemic, isolated  in a painful marriage, Marissa starts to gain a sense of the larger social framework responsible for much of Marissa's suffering—a pattern of toxic pillow talk, which has dominated Marissa's intimate relationships—which turns the private space of the bedroom into a place of secrets, sexual harassment, psychological manipulation, and physical abuse. After a series of encounters with feminist literature, film, and television, Marissa starts exploring the systemic nature of misogyny as the very air we breath, the sea we swim in. However, it’s Marissa's dream-life that actually turns the tide. Following a therapist’s suggestion, Marissa begins a dream journal. Recording past and present dreams, Marissa realizes they are full of water imagery—lakes, oceans, rivers, but also floods, tidal waves, and sea monsters. Returning to childhood nightmares, Marissa retraces their evolution over the course of Marissa's life. This journey leads  to powerful sources of strength and inspiration—a positive pillow talk emerges—an internal dialogue with Marissa's inner self that counters misogyny’s negative messaging. This process has a transformative impact on every aspect of Marissa's life. Having regained a sense of adventure, Marissa charts a course towards friendlier seas—Marissa's goal—to sail as far as possible from misogyny’s toxic waters.
• The PILLOW TALK website: http://pillowtalk.cloud The website hosts the book and promotes it by posting chapter previews, excerpts, and online events. It features the Pillow Talk Blog, which is linked to the Pillow Talk Facebook Page and the Pillow Talk Instagram and Twitter accounts The website invites visitors to subscribe and provides a PayPal link for those who want to purchase the book. Those who purchase the book will receive monthly installments until it's completion.
• The PILLOW TALK Blog features weekly posts analyzing films, books, and other popular media in an ongoing attempt to expose all the subtle, covert ways misogyny negatively impacts women and girls. Posts will demonstrate misogyny’s full scope and counter the misrepresentations and misunderstandings that are part and parcel with misogyny’s “self-masking" nature. According to Kate Manne, the author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, contrary to the popular use of the word, which attributes a set of negative behaviors to a few “bad” men, misogyny is systemic, structurally akin to other oppressive systems, like racism or heterosexism. It is a social force enacted primarily by straight, cisgendered men, but which we all participate in to some degree beyond our conscious awareness, “and sometimes, markedly contrary to our explicit moral beliefs and political commitments.” (Down Girl, xxi.) Misogyny upholds the patriarchal order by inflicting negative effects on girls and women, who fail “to give traditionally feminine goods (such as sex, care, nurturing, and reproductive labor) to designated, often more privileged men,” and insures that women and girls “refrain from taking traditionally masculine goods (such as power, authority, and claims to knowledge) away from them.” (Manne, Entitled, 11.)
• My Mission: Use popular media to expose the pervasive and toxic nature of systemic misogyny. Kate Manne states in the introduction of Down Girl, that “part of male dominance, especially on the part of the most privileged and powerful, seems to be seizing control of the narrative—and with it, controlling her, enforcing her concurrence. It is not exactly deference: rather, it closely resembles the moral aim of gaslighting,” whereby, “the capacity for the victim’s independent sense has been destroyed.” She’s made to eat her words and doubt herself. (Down Girl, 11.) As long as misogyny operates behind the scenes unchallenged as it has for centuries, it will, despite our best efforts to legislate for gender equality, undermine those efforts and punish those who interfere with its covert, but increasingly overt, exploitation and oppression of anyone who is not a cis-gendered, straight man.
• Clarification: Pillow Talk does not engage in personal accusations or finger pointing.
• Disclaimer: All characters and their particulars found in the book Pillow Talk are based in reality, but do not correspond with actual persons, places, or events.

Why I Need Your Support:

• Writing is a painstaking and difficult task. 
• It takes time to develop the website and blog as the primary means to promote the book and carry out my mission to expose systemic misogyny and its “self masking” strategies. Thus far, I have funded everything myself, but the costs are mounting. To maintain the blog and bring the book to completion I need outside support. I have monetized the blog, but it will take time for that to produce income.

Thank You!

• Your contribution will not only allow me to complete this project, it will help rewrite the social narrative that perpetuates patriarchy.
• I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who have supported me in this effort!

Project Timeline:

• June 2020: A few months into the pandemic lockdown, a friend recommended the book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne. It was life changing. I finally found a comprehensive description of negative dynamics I knew existed, but was unable to name or put my finger on.
• November 2020: I created the website and started Pillow Talk. Writing the first draft of the book became my refuge during the pandemic by providing a safe and creative way to reassess my own history of abuse and my overexposure to misogyny’s toxic effects.
• February 2021: I completed the first draft of the book.
• July 2021: I started workshopping my chapters with an experienced writer's group. The feedback has been very positive. Excerpts from those chapters can be viewed on the Pillow Talk Website .
• October 2021: The PILLOW TALK BOOK and WEBSITE/BLOG went live!
• June 2023: Projected date for the online book launch.

Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart!!! 

Susan Wright