Feminism Is for Everybody

Tough book to rate. Take the first and last chapter, and you have an incredibly well written book that perfectly sums up feminism, where it's been, where it lacks, and where it could go. Feminism in theory is about respect, about choice, about re-evaluating beliefs and including and affirming everyone. 5-star all the way.

The hundred pages in between are full of humble bragging (the only time she doesn't use generalizations is to either slam a particular target or quote her own books), lamenting the ineffectiveness of the movement and Hooks' personal disillusionment with it, and endless bitter screeds against the "privileged-class, affluent highly-educated white women" who in her opinion co-opted and destroyed the movement that only Hooks is in the best position to set straight. "White supremacist capitalist patriarchy" is another phrase that makes a regular appearance. With all of that on display, it's hard to know whether to renounce feminism (in favor of "humanism" perhaps?) or continue working toward greater equality for all under its name.

I would never recommend it as an introduction. No one barely becoming interested wants to know only why feminism failed or who broke it, when so many would dispute that it even was diminished. This book would turn off any newcomer.

Hooks has a particular habit of denouncing what she unconsciously affirms: Denouncing the retreat of feminism into academic jargon, she uses "patriarchy" constantly without actually defining it, along with "hegemony," "pedagogy" and so on. Denouncing classism while basically engaging in class warfare. It's a university-level book, and deeply fails at its stated goal of being the pamphlet that anyone could be handed to quickly get an overview of why feminism is important, what its loftiest ideals are, and what gains have been made in its name.

As long as it is, much more research should have gone into the book; it should have relied far less on the crutch of Hooks' own experience, and more on quotes from other people. It seems as if this entire book was banged out in her study one afternoon, presenting the entire rest of the movement as nameless and faceless groups who all fit into one of several molds. (The early "radical" movement, the later "classist white-supremacist" movement, or the splintered "male hating" movement.) This book would make it appear that Hooks is the only person in all of feminism who preaches love, inclusion, and education for all.

Getting specific: It's ludicrous that back to back chapters on nearly the same topic could be so different, such as 16 & 17; both are about sexual politics, but 17 is well thought out and well written with a powerful message from the beginning, while 16 is a bitter, meandering mess focused on how feminist bigotry helped turned back the clock on sexual rights. Oddly, all of the best points of that one were made in the last page: We are all too human and can bend our convictions in the face of intense stress, and that sexual freedom isn't about choosing a different path, but about being able to choose any path we desire.

I almost wonder whether the best parts were written by one person, and the rest fleshed out by someone else. But is the worst the ghostwriter, or the best?