Men Explain Things to Me
This book was basically perfect, and not just because I managed to read the entire thing during one of Gavin's naps. It's been a long time since I inhaled an entire book in one sitting, and it was a good feeling.
Men Explain Things to Me was expertly constructed, allowing the essays to build off of and inform each other. Each essay is preceded by an oil painting by Ana Teresa Fernandez. In the middle of the book, Solnit includes an essay about one of these paintings and the series that it's from. It helps clarify why she chose to include this artist's work, which speaks to the goal of the book. Perhaps it's a bit on the nose for Solnit to spell out her intentions like that. But essays, unlike fiction, need to be crystal clear.
I hadn't read the titular essay in total before picking up this book, though I had read a later spin on it, Men Explain Lolita to Me, which was published after this book. Despite this, I remember when the original essay was published. Solnit herself didn't coin the term "mansplaining", but her essay did lead directly to it. That word crystallized a near-universal experience and fundamentally changed the conversation about sexism in our modern world.
In one of her essays, Solnit says that "[f]eminism has proceeded in part by naming things". Over the course of the book, she highlights several of these words, from mansplaining to rape culture to sexual entitlement. None of these phrases was in the common lexicon when I was in college, less than a decade ago. Looking at these dates and thinking about how steeped I have been in this conversation on social media, it was nice to be reminded of how new it all is. There has been a huge shift in the culture in just the past few years, and this book forced me to take a moment and appreciate that.
Even in the three years since this book was published, we have made huge strides in advancing the conversation about sexism, and with the #MeToo movement it's starting to pay off in tangible results. It's messy and frustrating to be in the middle of all this, so it was nice to be reminded of how far the world has come in such a short time. It gives me hope for the future.
In one of her essays, Solnit channels Virginia Woolf to talk about the unknown future. I haven't read much of Woolf's work, so I'm probably not really qualified to critique this essay. But it was the one part of the book where I really disagreed with Solnit. She uses the essay to argue that accepting the unknown breeds hope. That you can't expect anything from the future, but you just have to work for what you want. That strikes me as rather bleak. My optimism is a very basic part of my personality. I truly believe that the future will be better than the present, and I don't know how I'd face the world without that rock solid belief.
Men Explain Things to Me was expertly constructed, allowing the essays to build off of and inform each other. Each essay is preceded by an oil painting by Ana Teresa Fernandez. In the middle of the book, Solnit includes an essay about one of these paintings and the series that it's from. It helps clarify why she chose to include this artist's work, which speaks to the goal of the book. Perhaps it's a bit on the nose for Solnit to spell out her intentions like that. But essays, unlike fiction, need to be crystal clear.
I hadn't read the titular essay in total before picking up this book, though I had read a later spin on it, Men Explain Lolita to Me, which was published after this book. Despite this, I remember when the original essay was published. Solnit herself didn't coin the term "mansplaining", but her essay did lead directly to it. That word crystallized a near-universal experience and fundamentally changed the conversation about sexism in our modern world.
In one of her essays, Solnit says that "[f]eminism has proceeded in part by naming things". Over the course of the book, she highlights several of these words, from mansplaining to rape culture to sexual entitlement. None of these phrases was in the common lexicon when I was in college, less than a decade ago. Looking at these dates and thinking about how steeped I have been in this conversation on social media, it was nice to be reminded of how new it all is. There has been a huge shift in the culture in just the past few years, and this book forced me to take a moment and appreciate that.
Even in the three years since this book was published, we have made huge strides in advancing the conversation about sexism, and with the #MeToo movement it's starting to pay off in tangible results. It's messy and frustrating to be in the middle of all this, so it was nice to be reminded of how far the world has come in such a short time. It gives me hope for the future.
In one of her essays, Solnit channels Virginia Woolf to talk about the unknown future. I haven't read much of Woolf's work, so I'm probably not really qualified to critique this essay. But it was the one part of the book where I really disagreed with Solnit. She uses the essay to argue that accepting the unknown breeds hope. That you can't expect anything from the future, but you just have to work for what you want. That strikes me as rather bleak. My optimism is a very basic part of my personality. I truly believe that the future will be better than the present, and I don't know how I'd face the world without that rock solid belief.
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