katiemhuang's review against another edition
2.0
This is a book that is personal, funny, and honestly vulnerable. There are certainly points in this book I disagree with, but it is so interesting to compare her coming of age story with my own, both two people experiencing the 2016 election and the aftermath that has brought us to today, but two people in entirely different places in life.
I’m giving it two because I think it makes some jumps, and inaccurately portrays some of how 2016 went down, specifically with regards to Hillary Clinton. The problem with this book is that it illustrates the wealthy, famous, white woman’s feminism. She recognizes that, but she speaks about a revolution. Her revolution is with people like Hillary Clinton? A shamelessly corrupt capitalist who has torn down women and capitulates her views with every step!
I truly wish this novel was more relatable, but it simply isn’t. It’s relatable to a woman who is so encrypted within her own elite class and issues, granted those women still face lots of sexism, their feminism is not the feminism of the working class.
I’m giving it two because I think it makes some jumps, and inaccurately portrays some of how 2016 went down, specifically with regards to Hillary Clinton. The problem with this book is that it illustrates the wealthy, famous, white woman’s feminism. She recognizes that, but she speaks about a revolution. Her revolution is with people like Hillary Clinton? A shamelessly corrupt capitalist who has torn down women and capitulates her views with every step!
I truly wish this novel was more relatable, but it simply isn’t. It’s relatable to a woman who is so encrypted within her own elite class and issues, granted those women still face lots of sexism, their feminism is not the feminism of the working class.
griffk07's review against another edition
I was part of a monthly book swap type book club, I became uninterested in the book club and started reading multiple books at a time and this one got lost. But I am picking it back up today.
kricketa's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but this book was better than what I was expecting.
Although, I do feel that the second two thirds were stronger than the first third (a lot of which focused on Hillary Clinton) and in some ways even contradicted the first third?
One of my favorite sections of the book was a guest essay by Airea D. Matthews about white feminism that was one of the most concise explanations of intersectional feminism I've ever read. I also learned a lot from the interview with Meredith Talusan. I think these collaborations were what really made the book stand out to me, along with Tamblyn's honest, critical, and hopeful response to hurtful things her own husband has done.
Although, I do feel that the second two thirds were stronger than the first third (a lot of which focused on Hillary Clinton) and in some ways even contradicted the first third?
One of my favorite sections of the book was a guest essay by Airea D. Matthews about white feminism that was one of the most concise explanations of intersectional feminism I've ever read. I also learned a lot from the interview with Meredith Talusan. I think these collaborations were what really made the book stand out to me, along with Tamblyn's honest, critical, and hopeful response to hurtful things her own husband has done.
twentysixarias's review against another edition
Didn’t do it for me. DNF. Delivery was off, although I agreed with many of the things she said — it might be because it’s coming from a celebrity. Also, the Hilary Clinton and Marilyn Manson mentions were
malindaoquinn's review against another edition
3.0
There are a lot of great ideas in this book and interesting thoughts, but the format for me seemed lacking. There seemed to be a lot of jumping around between ideas and subjects with very little transition. I think this could have been more coherent.
nyssahhhh's review against another edition
3.0
A little free-wheeling (where are the editors these days?!) but the parts that were good were really good. I would also like if we could just want to change the world for other humans and not just for our children.
Some of my favorite lines below.
15: Being unsure seems to be the only framework most women have to see their bigger picture. Women are raised to doubt first and decide last. By this I mean that we question our value or qualifications first, and if we feel that we have not just anything but everything to offer, only then do we feel safe to act. For most men, often the opposite is true. ...
The produce Audrey Rosenberg once told me that women are taught to confuse intuition with anxiety, and I believe this is true at any age. We are kept off-balance in so many ways-like being told that rational thought is the only approved way of thinning and that emotional intelligence is a hindrance, a crutch on which women alone exercise their drama.
16-7: Based on what I'e written and because I call myself a feminist, a person once asked me if I hated men. (A lot of people say this about feminists in general.) I do not hate men at all. I am critical of them, which is something I wish they themselves would e: have some introspective inquisition. I do not take pleasure in having to police the intentions of these men and this culture as a whole, nor does any other woman I know. ... The only way for any of us to be not just part of the problem but part of the solution is to first go inward and observe our own patterns. To own them, then take action.
36-7: And in the process I was learning the ropes of writing and directing by simply participating. Many women don't count this as enough experience but it absolutely is.
46: I could get rejected for jobs in acting, directing, or writing for the rest of my life, but nothing would ever take away what the experience of directing my first feature film had taught me: that I know myself better than I think I do and that I know my worth better than others think they do.
68: To say you are willing to sit out an election because a candidate does not tick every single one of your boxes is a form of self-centered blindness. Consider the children of minority families--of minority women--who have everything to lose from someone like Donald Trump becoming president, while the rest of us merely have everything to choose from.
71: [Bernie Sanders] clearly felt cheated out of the party's nomination, and everyone could see it. His attitude, a very public sulking, was a striking example of male privilege and the kind of behavior no female candidate could ever get away with had she lost the nomination.
75-6: Th e problem with having to rely on imagining what women can and cannot be is that we have to rely on exactly that: a form of make-believe. We have to envision it anew because it has ever existed before. Since we've never actually experienced a woman in the highest office, it becomes routine to point at the very best we've got and say: "No thank you, you're still not good enough." Because we ourselves have been conditioned to hear the same of ourselves. ... We break down what represents us because we are used to being broken down. We keep women's flaws at the forefront of our decision-making, rather than women's intelligence and talent, thereby perpetuating the message that women have only imperfection to offer. And if we see this focus on our imperfections as an acceptable everyday norm, then we don't ever have to confront the spell--a spell that has cast women against one another, only seeing the other as flawed imperfections under the gaze that has been normalized for us. This makes us work against our own self-interests, forcing us to stay where we are. Leaving us to merely imagine what could be.
89: What is it about sexual violence that leaves survivors feeling like they somehow deserved their abuse? And what is it about our culture that perpetuates this blame and sends the message that it's okay to shame survivors into believing they are somehow responsible for what's been done to them? For women, these have been historically difficult questions with answers that lie in the foundational belief that the autonomy of our bodies is not ours to govern in the first place...
103: As women, yes, we nurture our children and our partners and the people we love. but we must also nurture our right to reject those archetypes and the notion of nurturing altogether. We should nurture that right. We must take care of our careers, our power, and our ambition, as well as our right to be imperfect, difficult, and sometimes even bad people.
106: Love her or hate her, Mrs. Clinton's misogynistic defeat sent a message to women everywhere: If she can't succeed--this highly qualified yet imperfect woman--then none of us can succeed. And if we cannot succeed, we cannot survive.
122: There is no respected space in modern society for women to decide, live, and nurture among themselves outright, without judgment. So we return to the more familiar, accepted understanding of women the one that paints us archetypically as untrustworthy. This is how most women have learned to behave toward one another, to question and doubt one another's most primal decisions in the form of disguised sisterly support.
126: The burden is on women to be self-taught in a world where most men re already self-made--the latter being defined by expectations, the former by limitations.
145: Kavanaugh in particular was so upset he was practically spitting on the microphone while he yelled about how his nae had been tarnished, and he broke down crying on more than one occasion. If a woman had ever dared to show emotion in the way that Kavanaugh did, she would have been immediately deemed erratic, unstable, and unfit for office.
151: All of my questions led to the same truth, which is that if I didn't say something--if we didn't all just take the risk and say something-we would never break the cycle of abuse. We would forever be stuck in a pattern of watching it happen to someone else and being afraid that it may someday happen to us.
161: Extreme dieting and constant worry about the aesthetics of your body is not taking care of yourself, but women are taught from a very early age that it is.
163: The only way to change this unrealistic beauty standard is for women to spend less time focused on our bodies ad more time dismantling the system that upholds these cruel standards in the first place.
171: I am a white feminist. It has taken me years to own this pejorative term because I was afraid of how true it was, how true of me. But I own it because I do not want it to own me.
172: This defensiveness is our very whiteness speaking on our behalf--a pathology of privilege that makes excuses rather than absorbs and learns.
174: I don't want any white women to think that fucking up is the problem; it isn't. Not trying and not learning from our mistakes is the problem.
198 (Meredith): But we can't use our own oppression as a justification for oppressing other people.
204 (Amber): ...I think the greatest problem with feminism is the obsession with its perfect definition, with the purity, perfection, and precision of he definition. In the same way that women are upheld to a purity mentality--if you are not the most qualified, the most attractive, physically abled, if you are not the perfect definition--then you do not get to count.
214: As Ashley Judd said to me over dinner on evening: "Once you become aware, you become responsible." And it's unacceptable to evade that responsibility just because it's tiring or uncomfortable or because society has made it so you don't have to.
Some of my favorite lines below.
15: Being unsure seems to be the only framework most women have to see their bigger picture. Women are raised to doubt first and decide last. By this I mean that we question our value or qualifications first, and if we feel that we have not just anything but everything to offer, only then do we feel safe to act. For most men, often the opposite is true. ...
The produce Audrey Rosenberg once told me that women are taught to confuse intuition with anxiety, and I believe this is true at any age. We are kept off-balance in so many ways-like being told that rational thought is the only approved way of thinning and that emotional intelligence is a hindrance, a crutch on which women alone exercise their drama.
16-7: Based on what I'e written and because I call myself a feminist, a person once asked me if I hated men. (A lot of people say this about feminists in general.) I do not hate men at all. I am critical of them, which is something I wish they themselves would e: have some introspective inquisition. I do not take pleasure in having to police the intentions of these men and this culture as a whole, nor does any other woman I know. ... The only way for any of us to be not just part of the problem but part of the solution is to first go inward and observe our own patterns. To own them, then take action.
36-7: And in the process I was learning the ropes of writing and directing by simply participating. Many women don't count this as enough experience but it absolutely is.
46: I could get rejected for jobs in acting, directing, or writing for the rest of my life, but nothing would ever take away what the experience of directing my first feature film had taught me: that I know myself better than I think I do and that I know my worth better than others think they do.
68: To say you are willing to sit out an election because a candidate does not tick every single one of your boxes is a form of self-centered blindness. Consider the children of minority families--of minority women--who have everything to lose from someone like Donald Trump becoming president, while the rest of us merely have everything to choose from.
71: [Bernie Sanders] clearly felt cheated out of the party's nomination, and everyone could see it. His attitude, a very public sulking, was a striking example of male privilege and the kind of behavior no female candidate could ever get away with had she lost the nomination.
75-6: Th e problem with having to rely on imagining what women can and cannot be is that we have to rely on exactly that: a form of make-believe. We have to envision it anew because it has ever existed before. Since we've never actually experienced a woman in the highest office, it becomes routine to point at the very best we've got and say: "No thank you, you're still not good enough." Because we ourselves have been conditioned to hear the same of ourselves. ... We break down what represents us because we are used to being broken down. We keep women's flaws at the forefront of our decision-making, rather than women's intelligence and talent, thereby perpetuating the message that women have only imperfection to offer. And if we see this focus on our imperfections as an acceptable everyday norm, then we don't ever have to confront the spell--a spell that has cast women against one another, only seeing the other as flawed imperfections under the gaze that has been normalized for us. This makes us work against our own self-interests, forcing us to stay where we are. Leaving us to merely imagine what could be.
89: What is it about sexual violence that leaves survivors feeling like they somehow deserved their abuse? And what is it about our culture that perpetuates this blame and sends the message that it's okay to shame survivors into believing they are somehow responsible for what's been done to them? For women, these have been historically difficult questions with answers that lie in the foundational belief that the autonomy of our bodies is not ours to govern in the first place...
103: As women, yes, we nurture our children and our partners and the people we love. but we must also nurture our right to reject those archetypes and the notion of nurturing altogether. We should nurture that right. We must take care of our careers, our power, and our ambition, as well as our right to be imperfect, difficult, and sometimes even bad people.
106: Love her or hate her, Mrs. Clinton's misogynistic defeat sent a message to women everywhere: If she can't succeed--this highly qualified yet imperfect woman--then none of us can succeed. And if we cannot succeed, we cannot survive.
122: There is no respected space in modern society for women to decide, live, and nurture among themselves outright, without judgment. So we return to the more familiar, accepted understanding of women the one that paints us archetypically as untrustworthy. This is how most women have learned to behave toward one another, to question and doubt one another's most primal decisions in the form of disguised sisterly support.
126: The burden is on women to be self-taught in a world where most men re already self-made--the latter being defined by expectations, the former by limitations.
145: Kavanaugh in particular was so upset he was practically spitting on the microphone while he yelled about how his nae had been tarnished, and he broke down crying on more than one occasion. If a woman had ever dared to show emotion in the way that Kavanaugh did, she would have been immediately deemed erratic, unstable, and unfit for office.
151: All of my questions led to the same truth, which is that if I didn't say something--if we didn't all just take the risk and say something-we would never break the cycle of abuse. We would forever be stuck in a pattern of watching it happen to someone else and being afraid that it may someday happen to us.
161: Extreme dieting and constant worry about the aesthetics of your body is not taking care of yourself, but women are taught from a very early age that it is.
163: The only way to change this unrealistic beauty standard is for women to spend less time focused on our bodies ad more time dismantling the system that upholds these cruel standards in the first place.
171: I am a white feminist. It has taken me years to own this pejorative term because I was afraid of how true it was, how true of me. But I own it because I do not want it to own me.
172: This defensiveness is our very whiteness speaking on our behalf--a pathology of privilege that makes excuses rather than absorbs and learns.
174: I don't want any white women to think that fucking up is the problem; it isn't. Not trying and not learning from our mistakes is the problem.
198 (Meredith): But we can't use our own oppression as a justification for oppressing other people.
204 (Amber): ...I think the greatest problem with feminism is the obsession with its perfect definition, with the purity, perfection, and precision of he definition. In the same way that women are upheld to a purity mentality--if you are not the most qualified, the most attractive, physically abled, if you are not the perfect definition--then you do not get to count.
214: As Ashley Judd said to me over dinner on evening: "Once you become aware, you become responsible." And it's unacceptable to evade that responsibility just because it's tiring or uncomfortable or because society has made it so you don't have to.
technicolorlady's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
This book captures a very specific time in my late-20s feminism journey, post Trump election and pre pandemic.
Some of it aged poorly (she mentions being friends with Quention Tarantino and Armie Hammer more than once!) and most of it aged as well as it could have. I’d be curious to know what she thinks of some of the relationships she mentioned previously, and also like she states in her book; feminism has to grow and change, not maintain the points it always has. It’s pretty amazing how much has changed since 2018.
Some of it aged poorly (she mentions being friends with Quention Tarantino and Armie Hammer more than once!) and most of it aged as well as it could have. I’d be curious to know what she thinks of some of the relationships she mentioned previously, and also like she states in her book; feminism has to grow and change, not maintain the points it always has. It’s pretty amazing how much has changed since 2018.
lifeinpoetry's review
Update:
I read the other glowing reviews so decided to continue after a break. I skipped ahead about twenty minutes (I was about two hours in before that) and it definitely improved once she was past the election. I was particularly glad that she spoke about white feminism and then had Airea D. Matthews, a Black woman poet, respond at length to the idea of solidarity amongst women. There was also a chapter in which she had a conversation with Meredith Talusan, a nonbinary trans author and journalist. It does seem the shock of the election led to reassessment and growth though it's always a bit galling to hear yet again that a) people were shocked b) people sometimes have to be shocked into feminism, thankfully intersectional feminism in this case so I'll take it.
3.5, due to the weak first half.
-
A lesser version of other books on the election. I've read many books on feminism and the election and it's hard to hear it rehashed again from a privileged perspective in such a mediocre way. This is feminism for beginners.
I'm certain her poetry collections have biased me against her.
I read the other glowing reviews so decided to continue after a break. I skipped ahead about twenty minutes (I was about two hours in before that) and it definitely improved once she was past the election. I was particularly glad that she spoke about white feminism and then had Airea D. Matthews, a Black woman poet, respond at length to the idea of solidarity amongst women. There was also a chapter in which she had a conversation with Meredith Talusan, a nonbinary trans author and journalist. It does seem the shock of the election led to reassessment and growth though it's always a bit galling to hear yet again that a) people were shocked b) people sometimes have to be shocked into feminism, thankfully intersectional feminism in this case so I'll take it.
3.5, due to the weak first half.
-
A lesser version of other books on the election. I've read many books on feminism and the election and it's hard to hear it rehashed again from a privileged perspective in such a mediocre way. This is feminism for beginners.
I'm certain her poetry collections have biased me against her.
bmaddy72's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.0
I thought this book was a good starting place to introduce ideas of modern day feminism. I did not think the book was written in any profound sort of way and the most eloquent part of the book was the epilogue to her daughter. Overall it provides a decent starting place for action points for both white women and men but lacks any real substance in terms of next steps and further resources.