One could argue that as we get older: our creativity diminishing, our thoughts more focused on news and current events we become more cynical. Thus, we find more enjoyment in those hard facts and evidence that reinforce that our opinions are well off. However, I still praise and have a warm spot in my heart for the intriguing characters of those stories and the hidden meanings and morals that it often teaches us.
Like all the books I read, I unexpectedly stumbled and by random chance happened to pick up this book. Why I Am Not A Feminist: a feminist manifesto by Jessa Crispin. The cover so crisp and cool to the touch, the cover scrawled with words like capitalist market, destroy, definitely not for me, pose no threat and other phrases made me very interested. The title itself feeling like a juxtaposition, perhaps even an oxymoron made me believe that it was going to explore both the negative and positive sides of a more modern feminism. It seemed refreshing, like an opinion that is not often heard of because of doubt that it might not be taken in the right context or with good will. In a world that is becoming increasingly hostile (or rather angry) towards modern or new wave feminism despite what all the ads, commercials, and celebrities have you believe whenever you decree yourself as a feminist, especially online it seems, you get a swarm of people saying why it's a cancerous way of thinking and why it's definitely not needed in our western society. You'll find various examples of this by just looking on YouTube at all the compilations of angry feminists getting "owned" and people arguing that there's no such thing as rape culture while simultaneously saying that you were probably asking for it. Perhaps like everyone else, we are all subject to our biases whether we are aware of it or not.
I was genuinely eager to start the book, I wanted to hear the other side of the story, of why it seems so many women now don't like being labeled feminists. Why the word has become something to disassociate ourselves with. But what I encountered instead was a 151 page rant. The kind of ramble you see being extended in a thread in 140 characters or less on twitter. It was disappointing. It usually takes me a while to finish a book but I breezed through this in a day due to the big font and the excessive double spacing, like the author was trying to make up for the lack of research and actual insight she had to incorporate into the book. She mentions two radical feminists from the 70's throughout the entire book, like they were the whole history of the 2nd wave. It almost seemed introductory to someone who has no tangible knowledge into feminism. Which is fine if it had been an introduction but it wasn't.
With all this being said, there were a couple points that she made that definitely made me question my position and even see things through a different perspective that I hadn't thought about. For instance, instead of criticizing women or anyone that doesn't identify being feminist it is important to open discourse, question why they've taken that stance. Be open and especially listen to those reasons and instead of having the intent of indoctrinating them it's more important to bridge a gap. Unfortunately, she also believes that it is not our job to educate men in topics of women's rights and problems they often face in the world. While I do agree that men are capable human beings of researching things themselves and learning more about said issues it's important to give insight to even begin to start looking into it. No one is going to take time out of their day to look into something they don't care about. It's important to start discussion, to promote interest so that one will be more driven to actually learning more about it.
Another thing she points out is that feminism is incredibly centered around the core issues of the white woman, the CIA or the journalist in a magazine. How it cater to the white woman experience, and while this has been true for quite some time it's becoming more and more intersectional encompassing women of color, women of different socio-economic backgrounds. She also argues that feminism should itself be radical. If it's not intimidating people, if it's not pushing back in extreme ways then it's not really progressing at all. What she fails to notice is that although extremism usually catches the attention of the masses and is usually subject to scandal it seems discouraging. Being on the extreme of any spectrum will ultimately lead to being equally as bad as the thing we're trying to go against.
Furthermore, while she sees all the aspects of modern feminism as problematic and lazy she gives no option of what we can do differently. She lays out all the fundamentals of what she sees wrong with the movement but doesn't proceed to explain what we can do differently. How we can change for the better, the tweakings that will lead us in the right direction. Any semblance of the idea of "if we're doing this, perhaps let's try this instead".
Overall, it left me feeling apathetic and didn't convince me of it's urgency. It felt like it didn't actually try to stick out to give a piece of information that hadn't already been said before countless times in others books. It felt more like listening to someone at a party sloppily be annoyed at something someone said the other day and couldn't let it go.
While I do think it's important that we always stay listening to both sides of the argument, it's also important to understand our reasoning for why we have that stance in the first place and it seemed like the author had a tenuous grasp on this subject, tackling with little research besides her own emotions and irritation for what she deems present-day feminism is.
And it's okay not to have an exact answer to this question, in fact I would argue that not a lot of people do. It takes a lot of thought and thorough investigation into what needs to change and how we can do that. But while, it's okay not to have a right answer, the author comes off as condescending when expressing that she doesn't care whether you like her opinion or not and that if we can't acclimate to being all in or all out then we can't call ourselves feminists.
The point is we try to be. No one can be an activist 24/7. You can't go to rallies and invest your entire existence to a particular movement and center yourself around it all the time. I mean, you certainly can but it's not doable to a lot of people. There are other duties as a human being that you have to tend to in order to just get by in life. We try to contribute the best we can and hope that everyone is doing the same in order to see some progress. Maybe not in our lifetime but constant enough that maybe the next generation will feel it.
as always, thank you for reading.
sincerely,
your twitchy narrator
