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A review by 11corvus11
The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance by Sabrina Strings
4.0
Mostly good, longer review later.
Less comprehensive version without good formatting-
Positive:
Academic parts are written accessibly and there is a lot of good research put into it
Memoir parts break it up well
Lots of nuanced niche conversations about complicated and conflicting issues around culture and oppression, misogynoir, pop culture, etc
I really like the term "insufficiently white" and how she uses it.
Mostly has the best parts of secondish wave feminism, mostly without the bad parts. The section about porn I am sure someone will try to call SWERFy but I thought she did well discussing media access and effects without blaming sex workers at all.
Negative: she really should have worked out her sexuality and understanding of trans people more before this bc it's really uncomfortable at times how cringe or offensive some of her assumptions were and are that we didn't need to hear about. Finding out a man you think is attractive is trans doesn't suddenly mean you're not straight unless you think they're not actually men. Also talking about how she used to call trans women men in dresses- you learned, we get it, but we didn't need this confession. Like trans people are very diverse and some are just men and women. You can be straight and attracted to trans people. Her queerness is clearly not about "being attracted to trans people" but that's what she centered which comes off as fetishy.
Less comprehensive version without good formatting-
Positive:
Academic parts are written accessibly and there is a lot of good research put into it
Memoir parts break it up well
Lots of nuanced niche conversations about complicated and conflicting issues around culture and oppression, misogynoir, pop culture, etc
I really like the term "insufficiently white" and how she uses it.
Mostly has the best parts of secondish wave feminism, mostly without the bad parts. The section about porn I am sure someone will try to call SWERFy but I thought she did well discussing media access and effects without blaming sex workers at all.
Negative: she really should have worked out her sexuality and understanding of trans people more before this bc it's really uncomfortable at times how cringe or offensive some of her assumptions were and are that we didn't need to hear about. Finding out a man you think is attractive is trans doesn't suddenly mean you're not straight unless you think they're not actually men. Also talking about how she used to call trans women men in dresses- you learned, we get it, but we didn't need this confession. Like trans people are very diverse and some are just men and women. You can be straight and attracted to trans people. Her queerness is clearly not about "being attracted to trans people" but that's what she centered which comes off as fetishy.