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Dispatches from the '90s
Mar. 23rd, 2022 03:13 pmI belatedly (because it was again for a book club) read bell hooks’ Feminism Is for Everybody, which I have been wanting to read for a few years now. And I don’t know if I’m just in a bad mood lately or what, but I was kind of underwhelmed? I might just be tired of “primers” and other 101-level material for subjects I already have some familiarity with–I got occasionally bored with Gender Queer for some of the same reasons, even though I’d hardly consider myself an expert on genderqueerness–but also I’m just not sure how much Feminism Is for Everybody really works as a primer as opposed to a manifesto. It’s extremely short, but it’s subject matter covers the entirety of the feminist movement from the early 1960s through the 1990s, so it necessarily runs full of generalizations and its treatment of any given feminist subtopic tends to be a bit sweeping. But I’m not sure this means bell hooks did a bad job given that structure so much as I don’t like that structure and am no longer the audience for it.
That said, I’m not sure that today it’d be the best book for the absolute beginners who are its intended audience, either–it’s intended to be accessible but it’s certainly got its share of academic writing tics. The bigger issue is, I think, just that it’s a bit dated; we’re now as far away from the ‘90s as the ‘90s were from the beginning of the second wave, and I think some of it might be confusing to a current audience if you either aren’t old enough to remember the ‘80s and ‘90s backlash or at least read Susan Faludi’s Backlash. Then there’s stuff that is apparently confusing to other readers that seemed perfectly clear to me and I’m not quite sure what in my background reading makes it not-confusing to me but apparently very confusing for other readers (mainly the language around women involved in the second-wave movement “choosing” lesbianism or bisexuality, like, yes, people make choices about what terms they identify with and what relationships and activities they’re going to pursue and generally, like, how they are going to live, more modern writing might have said “exploring” here instead but I’m really not sure where people are getting the idea that hooks thinks you can choose your attractions).
I also bounced a bit off the bits about spirituality and love. Some of this is because I’m not very spiritual and I’m also definitely not a big love person. Some of it is also because I’ve lately become very wary of generalization-riddled leftist language that spends a lot of time talking about doing nebulous inner work on yourself as being the horizon of change, as opposed to showing up and doing organizing, and then developing whatever interpersonal skills are required for you to organize with other people without driving each other out of the room. The fact is that you can talk about love til you’re blue in the face, and organizing will still consist mostly of boring hard work that’s only bearable to do on a sustained basis if you can stand to be in a room with the people you do it with, and politics is mostly full of people who come to public meetings because otherwise nobody would stay in a room with them.
Anyway, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in this book, if not very in-depth-ly. A lot of it is definitely, like, bell hooks’ personal take on the second wave of the movement, and you may agree or disagree with her takes (or, if you are truly the beginner the book is for, have absolutely no idea how to go about testing them). It definitely touches on a number of the important common failure points and stratifications within feminism, especially racial and class division. The bits on sex works are a bit yikes but blessedly limited to a handful of sentences. Idunno, it’s an interesting collection of thoughts and high-level analysis about a variety of things related to feminism and the feminist movement, but I just didn’t find it as meaty as something like Women, Race, and Class, which is also fairly short but is also more specifically a history with a lot more concrete detail.
That said, I’m not sure that today it’d be the best book for the absolute beginners who are its intended audience, either–it’s intended to be accessible but it’s certainly got its share of academic writing tics. The bigger issue is, I think, just that it’s a bit dated; we’re now as far away from the ‘90s as the ‘90s were from the beginning of the second wave, and I think some of it might be confusing to a current audience if you either aren’t old enough to remember the ‘80s and ‘90s backlash or at least read Susan Faludi’s Backlash. Then there’s stuff that is apparently confusing to other readers that seemed perfectly clear to me and I’m not quite sure what in my background reading makes it not-confusing to me but apparently very confusing for other readers (mainly the language around women involved in the second-wave movement “choosing” lesbianism or bisexuality, like, yes, people make choices about what terms they identify with and what relationships and activities they’re going to pursue and generally, like, how they are going to live, more modern writing might have said “exploring” here instead but I’m really not sure where people are getting the idea that hooks thinks you can choose your attractions).
I also bounced a bit off the bits about spirituality and love. Some of this is because I’m not very spiritual and I’m also definitely not a big love person. Some of it is also because I’ve lately become very wary of generalization-riddled leftist language that spends a lot of time talking about doing nebulous inner work on yourself as being the horizon of change, as opposed to showing up and doing organizing, and then developing whatever interpersonal skills are required for you to organize with other people without driving each other out of the room. The fact is that you can talk about love til you’re blue in the face, and organizing will still consist mostly of boring hard work that’s only bearable to do on a sustained basis if you can stand to be in a room with the people you do it with, and politics is mostly full of people who come to public meetings because otherwise nobody would stay in a room with them.
Anyway, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in this book, if not very in-depth-ly. A lot of it is definitely, like, bell hooks’ personal take on the second wave of the movement, and you may agree or disagree with her takes (or, if you are truly the beginner the book is for, have absolutely no idea how to go about testing them). It definitely touches on a number of the important common failure points and stratifications within feminism, especially racial and class division. The bits on sex works are a bit yikes but blessedly limited to a handful of sentences. Idunno, it’s an interesting collection of thoughts and high-level analysis about a variety of things related to feminism and the feminist movement, but I just didn’t find it as meaty as something like Women, Race, and Class, which is also fairly short but is also more specifically a history with a lot more concrete detail.