Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

I read the 2nd edition

Holy moly. I was literally putting on the finishing touches of this review when I heard the news about the author passing. What a strange and sad coincidence. Please read her books. She was a wonderful person and I hope she rests in power.
One of my favorite YouTubers, “F.D. Signifier” recommended this author, and I already had one of her books on my reading list, so I figured I'd bump up this more recent book to the top of the list.
To me, this short book seems to be the spiritual predecessor of “Feminism for the 99%” by Cinzia Arruzza, Nancy Fraser, and Tithi Bhattacharya (2019). Both of which look at the intersectionality of feminism with racial justice, and class consciousness. This is summarized by my favorite quote: “Intersectionality without class consciousness is just Identity politics. Class consciousness without intersectionality is class reductionism. We need both. We have the same enemy.” Coined by someone on Twitter.
As the author says, feminism IS for everybody. It's not about fighting specific people, it's about fighting specific ideas and to strive for a more fair, safe, & equitable society.
The first edition was published in 2000. Which you can really tell when the author doesn't mention the internet at all, and how the author kept describing lesbianism as a “choice” and a “lifestyle choice”. Bit of a yikes. The only obvious change in this version was a new Forward. But there might have been more changes that I didn't notice.
What was interesting to me was how she mentioned after her first book (“Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism”) was published, she angered the lesbian community for not including them in the book. And in this book, she doesn't mention trans people at all. Very curious.
I really liked how she went over the history of 20th century feminism, the infighting, infiltration of bourgeois white feminism, and sects of thought that were more alienating to the general public than others. Such as the sect that believes sadomasochism is anti-feminist, (which we'd now call kink-shaming) and the sect that believed all form of penetrative sex, no matter what, is rape (which we'd now call crazy talk). I didn't know much about those two and several other branches of feminist theory. That was interesting.
Pretty much everything she brings up is still relevant 21 years later:
• “Men's Rights” organizations being a cesspool of misogyny.
• Colonial ‘feminists' leveraging US imperialism to tell countries “how to treat your women”. This has become more relevant this year with the final end of the war in Afghanistan. We've seen conservatives & supposed ‘bleeding heart' liberals claiming to care about the women of Afghanistan, and how that's why we need to continue the endless war that's killed thousands of female civilians. Next year I'll hopefully be reading “A Decolonial Feminism” by Françoise Vergès, which will cover that more.
• “Power Feminists,” more colloquially be referred to now as “lean-in feminism,” which is a faux-feminist sect that encourages the domination of women by other women in the corporate setting. This was really well dismantled in “Feminism for the 99%”. It's incredibly popular in the white liberal sphere.
• How physically abusing children is...uh...bad, no matter what. I still get in Facebook fights with friends and randoms about whether or not you should spank your children, despite the insurmountable evidence against the practice.
• The ever shaky ground of reproductive rights. More relevant than ever these days.
I liked the book. It strove to explain feminist theory in a simple, easy to understand manner that doesn't make you feel bad about yourself, and it succeeded. I recommend it to anyone interested in wanting to understand intersectional feminist theory. Though if you want an even more concise book on intersectional feminism, I'd highly recommend “Feminism for the 99%.” That was one of my favorite books of 2019.