3.77 AVERAGE

informative inspiring slow-paced

Whilst I found 90% of this boring and unfathomably slow, here is what I did pick up and highlight from it:


“The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women—of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.”


“Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty. I’m grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless.”

^ This is how I feel when it comes to minority groups, in my case bigger people, queer people and trans people.


About SA training for women:

“the usual guidelines in such situations put the full burden of prevention on potential victims, treating the violence as a given.“

“Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. But we are free together or slaves together. Surely the mindset of those who think they need to win, to dominate, to punish, to reign supreme must be terrible and far from free, and giving up this unachievable pursuit would be liberatory.”


About the idea that women who sue rapists endanger the man’s careers:

“What matters, in the end, is that a poor immigrant woman upended the career of one of the most powerful men in the world, or rather exposed behavior that should have ended it far earlier. ”

informative slow-paced
hopeful informative medium-paced

DNF 68%.
I can't take this anymore. I CAN'T. This is such a load of boring poppycock.

Quick read, all ideas I agree with. A little outdated and definitely lacking intersectionality. I also found her writing style hard to unpack - a lot of long sentences with a lot of detail.
emotional informative reflective medium-paced
challenging dark funny sad medium-paced

My favourites were Men Explain Things to me and Cassandra Among the Creeps

@laurakell ja @annibetti reviews siia

I found the first couple of essays depressing and soul breaking. Nothing she wrote in them was new to me but it still hurts my heart and soul on how women are hurt and attacked daily in this world. I appreciate her words of hope in the final essay. That even as we are still being attacked and there are those that are trying to push women back to a place that they think we belong, we are in fact still moving forward. It may be slow but the movement continues. We have allies who move forward with us. That it can't be a narrow road we walk but it must encompass all the necessary changes in this world to make everyone equal and only in full equality for all will we all have a voice.