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Fire with Fire: New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-First Century by Naomi Wolf
emuishere's review
I found this book very helpful in understanding the history of feminism and its complexities, broadly from the 70s into the 90s. Wolf explains the issues that men and women have with feminism in an accessible way, and also tackles a lot of the questions and impasses that feminists are met with. She also provides a thorough explanation of victim and power feminism.
aseel_reads's review
3.0
First half of the book was going to be a 5... and then it went downhill.
What I liked about Wolf’s feminism was the focus on getting females into politics and grabbing power (she called it power feminism). The idea that we deserve recognition, rewards, money, choice to be sexual or not, etc because we are humans not because we are females is really important and I loved it.
What I didn’t like was her concept of ‘victim feminism’. At first I understood the distinction between it and power feminism (victim feminism is the idea that woman are just so good and kind and we should give them rights because they are angels and we shall be nice to get our rights from people who took them away for us in the first place). But then she started victim blaming. Yup. Pissed me off intensely. Firstly, the idea that in a domestic violence situation, females should get themselves out of it when in reality society and the perpetrator has ripped them apart psychologically that they can’t fight back because they believe they deserve this criminally treatment. Next Wolf writes that men should understand no but it’s also up to the females job to ACTUALLY SAY NO. Yup, she said that. Not taking into consideration that no one is ever taught bodily autonomy and we should accept anything that others do to us as fine. I seriously see red reading that. She also talks about how females are getting more guns in America to protect themselves, therefore, we can’t be victims in rape or physical assault because we can ‘protect ourselves and should’... like more violence is the answer (also sounds so much like trump when he says if more people had guns, mass shootings wouldn’t occur..)
Lastly, her statistics are all from the US, UK and Australia. And her future suggestions are definitely targeted to middle/upper class, western females. No intersectionality at all. She did mention that she was talking about females who have the choice like those in western countries but she doesn’t try to explain or help the other 2/3 of the worlds population. And believe me, there are impressive political statistics from Asian/middle east countries.
On the whole, an interesting read but quite disappointed because I loved the beauty myth.
What I liked about Wolf’s feminism was the focus on getting females into politics and grabbing power (she called it power feminism). The idea that we deserve recognition, rewards, money, choice to be sexual or not, etc because we are humans not because we are females is really important and I loved it.
What I didn’t like was her concept of ‘victim feminism’. At first I understood the distinction between it and power feminism (victim feminism is the idea that woman are just so good and kind and we should give them rights because they are angels and we shall be nice to get our rights from people who took them away for us in the first place). But then she started victim blaming. Yup. Pissed me off intensely. Firstly, the idea that in a domestic violence situation, females should get themselves out of it when in reality society and the perpetrator has ripped them apart psychologically that they can’t fight back because they believe they deserve this criminally treatment. Next Wolf writes that men should understand no but it’s also up to the females job to ACTUALLY SAY NO. Yup, she said that. Not taking into consideration that no one is ever taught bodily autonomy and we should accept anything that others do to us as fine. I seriously see red reading that. She also talks about how females are getting more guns in America to protect themselves, therefore, we can’t be victims in rape or physical assault because we can ‘protect ourselves and should’... like more violence is the answer (also sounds so much like trump when he says if more people had guns, mass shootings wouldn’t occur..)
Lastly, her statistics are all from the US, UK and Australia. And her future suggestions are definitely targeted to middle/upper class, western females. No intersectionality at all. She did mention that she was talking about females who have the choice like those in western countries but she doesn’t try to explain or help the other 2/3 of the worlds population. And believe me, there are impressive political statistics from Asian/middle east countries.
On the whole, an interesting read but quite disappointed because I loved the beauty myth.
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