The best thing about Queen’s Gambit is there’s no rape in it. I kept waiting for it, but there was no sexual assault, not in the orphanage, not in the male world of chess. It was a rape-free story about a woman succeeding. As a writer this is something I think about a lot. 1/5

She had sex but no rape. I admit I don’t create violence-free worlds for my female characters & I’ve questioned the impetus to do so— I’ve questioned the Staunch Prize in print— isn’t it ultimately damaging to negate this real & pervasive part of women’s lives? Why pretend? 2/5

But by the end of QG I felt I understood the value of writing utopia. I felt freer. I felt free to imagine a world in which the only barriers a character faces are economic and familial and intellectual and basic misogyny— but in which her physical safety was not threatened. 3/5

Years ago I began a novel by asking myself the question: Why do we always write dystopias? Why not utopias? (I failed at my own game and instead wrote a book about America and the psycho-pharma revolution of the 1950s; so, a book about failed utopias). 4/5

In Queen’s Gambit, the tension was always there for me: which dude is going to be the bad one? And yeah, in the real world I don’t think she would have avoided the threat of assault...
5/6 (yeah I lied there’s 6 now)

... because in the real world basic misogyny is tied to violence for women. But I wonder now if I can be imaginative enough to dream up real worlds where women can see themselves as players, see themselves safe to play.

Also the costumes and editing were both sublime.
~fin~