emeliestegbornblixt 's review for:

Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual For a Sexist Workplace by Jessica Bennett

2.0

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Are there some useful practical tips and tricks in here? Sure. But not really anything you won't pick up by reading a few buzzfeed-esque "feminist" articles. My main gripe with this is that it's basically strategies for how to be (normatively) successful in the context of patriarchal capitalism in spite of being a twenty-something white straight cis woman. The feminist analysis is lacking, especially in regards to intersectionality (the cis-centric way of talking about gender was extremely frustrating) - and also, what the fucking goal of this whole feminist project is. It appears to me based on this book that Bennett's vision of that goal is that we all join the white straight cis men in driving our entire existance off a cliff. Which isn't helpful. "Just be more like men" isn't helpful. It will earn you more money, though, which is where the limited usefulness of the contents of this book comes in - because we all live in the context of global capitalism and need that shit to survive. So there's that.

Also, the section directed at men at the end of the book annoyed the heck out of me, because of how patronising it was, but also how it was clearly based on the assumption that only straight men would be reading it.