Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell

4 reviews

mmestitches's review against another edition

0.25

Irresponsible at best. I feel like the point of this book was to humanize how people make terrible mistakes, but ultimately it reinforced the idea that keeping people with power emotionally comfortable is more important than protecting the lives of people without power. 
I normally love Malcom Gladwell's work but this book was irresponsible as hell in how it discussed some high profile cases about sexual predators. He draws a parallel between victims of CSA being unable to understand they're being abused and grown ass adults allowing kids being raped as a result of their inability to handle some cognitive dissonance. I see this pattern of making victims of child abuse equally responsible to the adults committing or enabling the abuse,  and it makes me want to scream. Gladwell went as far as to play a clip of a victim crying and pleading with her abuser to recognize the hurt he caused, and the purpose of this clip is to show how murky the facts can get in these cases as opposed to being used as a classic example of how a groomed and abused child grows into an adult who feels responsible for healing the person that abused them.  These responses are not murky, they are well researched and understood, but holding people accountable for their actions is hard so Gladwell took a lazy, victim blaming approach.  How disappointing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Police brutality, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

Not worth reading, spare yourself

bjdarby's review against another edition

slow-paced

1.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Death, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, Police brutality, and Sexual harassment

marcella98's review against another edition

DNF at 38%

Please read some 1 star reviews of this book before trying to read this. Gladwell chooses the worst of the worst cases for shock value to put down to "miscommunications", happily overlooking sexism, racism and abuse of power. I didn't even get to the "defending Brock Turner" part, but the way he readily discards the stories of victims of childhood sexual abuse simply because their stories changed over time is sickening. Gladwell has no kind of background in psychology and literally just has no idea what he's talking about. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, and Sexual assault

lorenashleybarrett's review against another edition

fast-paced

1.75

 Hard to review because it was a engaging book, had some interesting concepts with great audio production on the audiobook. I liked the concepts of default to truth, transparency and coupling. They were really interesting to learn about and make a lot of sense, it felt like we were building up to a conclusion but the case studies were never tied together and left me feeling shocked and uneasy. To completely disregard race, gender, class and power dynamics at play in all of these cases seems irresponsible and permissive. Without defining a stranger and without acknowledging the way these social miscommunications are amplified and exaggerated by things like race and gender was really disappointing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, and Police brutality