A review by eososray
Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults by Laurie Penny

2.0

To start, I skipped over all the essay's about Trump. I know, I've heard, new articles are being written everyday.

For the rest, these very much come across as articles written as 'click bait'. They are short, emotional and on controversial or dramatic subjects.

So, all 20 something girls should be single. I think this is strange. We don't tell men this. We don't think that they will be less independent or that they will be making wrong decisions. I think that this statement of staying single means something else. I think has nothing to do with the actual singleness, I think it has to do with independence and how we view this as imperative to do on your own. I don't agree.

Also, this vision that so many writers have of a world where the roles were reversed. Like, if men were the ones who got pregnant. Why do we always think this would be better, that the things we want as women would automatically exist just because men are experiencing these things. Maybe it would be worse, maybe it would be exactly the same. Automatically thinking that it would be better, is something we should stop. Because it's probably not true.

I think Emma Watson, Beyonce and Mad Max need to be dropped as feminist subjects. These are tired discussions, endlessly written about. First, these women should be left to live their lives however they want. Second, it's a movie, not a feminist icon.

And lastly, I actually am insulted that she considers Jane Austen to have written 'horror' stories about women with no other choice but to catch a man.
These books are satires on life in those times and in that era, no doubt. But to classify them as horror stories about women trapped does them a great disservice.