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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
reflective
Slightly trite, after almost 15 years, but still an interesting, easy read, that I enjoyed as a bit of a booster shot. Rebecca Solnit writes wonderfully, and on incredibly diverse topics - she scratches the surface of the intersectional writers that have followed her since.
Achingly funny and achingly devastating. I recommend the first chapter to everyone (men and women) -- it's laugh-out-loud funny, while surfacing unpleasant realities about gender. Subsequent chapters move from mansplaining to stark statistics on rape, domestic abuse, economic inequality, and other forms of subjugation and silencing that some (many) men do to women. For the most part the essays don't read as an attack on men (though the quotes below might sound like they do); she treats many men as allies and sees these power issues as ones that affect all of us.
Some favorite quotes:
"Explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge."
"So many men murder their partners and former partners that we have well over a thousand homicides of that kind a year--meaning that every three years the death toll tops 9/11's casualties, though no one declares a war on this particular kind of terror. (Another way to put it; the more than 11,766 corpses from domestic-violence homicides between 9/11 and 2012 exceed the number of deaths of victims on that day and all American soldiers killed in the 'war on terror.')"
"We have far more than eight-seven thousand rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they're spatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain."
"We still haven't really talked about the fact that, of sixty-two mass shootings in the United States in three decades, only one was by a woman, because when you say 'lone gunman,' everyone talks about loners and guns but not about men."
"Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being."
Some favorite quotes:
"Explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge."
"So many men murder their partners and former partners that we have well over a thousand homicides of that kind a year--meaning that every three years the death toll tops 9/11's casualties, though no one declares a war on this particular kind of terror. (Another way to put it; the more than 11,766 corpses from domestic-violence homicides between 9/11 and 2012 exceed the number of deaths of victims on that day and all American soldiers killed in the 'war on terror.')"
"We have far more than eight-seven thousand rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they're spatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain."
"We still haven't really talked about the fact that, of sixty-two mass shootings in the United States in three decades, only one was by a woman, because when you say 'lone gunman,' everyone talks about loners and guns but not about men."
"Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being."
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I thought this was going to be a completely different kind of book.
The first essay was lighthearted and amusing then we take a hard turn into the second essay which was just statistic after statistic of all the rape, murder and other terrible things that men do to women all across the world.
I thought it'd be quirky stories about mansplaining but it was heavy and depressingly redundant.
I also didn't love the writing style/sentence structure, which was clunky at times and required rereading to figure out what she was saying.
The first essay was lighthearted and amusing then we take a hard turn into the second essay which was just statistic after statistic of all the rape, murder and other terrible things that men do to women all across the world.
I thought it'd be quirky stories about mansplaining but it was heavy and depressingly redundant.
I also didn't love the writing style/sentence structure, which was clunky at times and required rereading to figure out what she was saying.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Murder, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
slow-paced
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual harassment
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I think Men Explain Things to Me has an important message that gets muddled down and redundant. Being that this is a collection of essays, sometimes the same points are driven again and again and it doesn’t seem to be in an effort to emphasize importance, but more an oversight on how this has already come up elsewhere in the book.
The beginning and ending were fairly strong but the middle was a struggle to get through at times. Overall, I’ll likely read Solnit’s work again but bit by bit and not likely in large chunks as I did with this one.
The beginning and ending were fairly strong but the middle was a struggle to get through at times. Overall, I’ll likely read Solnit’s work again but bit by bit and not likely in large chunks as I did with this one.
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting