Women – Scarred and Exhausted.

I have a feeling my review of Moran’s How to Be a Woman is going to be more a discussion about these types of Feminism 101 books and the backlash they can sometimes bring. Here’s my disclaimer… we all have to start somewhere. And memoirs are inherently going to be the story of a person. This book is that, one woman’s account of how she came to deal with becoming and being a woman in the world she inhabits, today. She writes it honestly, humorously, and with a great deal of heart. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t expecting a masterwork of the next wave of feminism. I was expecting someone to tell me her story, and she did.

“At some point – scarred and exhausted – you either accept that you must become a woman – that you are a woman – or you die. This is the brutal, root truth of adolescence – that it is often a long, painful campaign of attrition.” (10)

So I’m pleased with the book. But, there’s always more to the story. Out there on the interwebs (which I define as anyplace outside of the safety net of CBR and CBR adjacent places) there has been a lot of backlash about this book. And a lot of one star ratings. I can see most of the complaints, but I can’t make myself downgrade my rating of this book.

I feel like this is also a place to mention that the title of this book is not How to Be a Feminist. While Moran’s feminism is front and center to her writing here, the book is not intended to be prescriptive. For every time Moran lays out a “we should do THIS” statement, she’s backtracking and coming at it from another angle just a few pages down the line. Also, it’s an important note that this is a populist feminism she is writing about that concerns itself with the everyday shit women have to endure. She’s not saying that bigger issues like pay inequity and abortion are unimportant, but rather that women need to decide how they feel about the things they encounter in their own lives and run it through a lens of “are the boys being made to put up with this shit?”.

It should also be noted that this book is now five years old. We have had a lot of movement forward in the past five years, but sometimes it feels like we’re still just uncovering the bits that still need to be sorted. Intersectionality? Oh yes, we can and should be doing better. Transgender rights? Well, what’s going on in certain states around the U.S. is definitely a sign of alarm, and we’ll have to continue reckoning with that civil rights issue as we have with the ones which came before. Just getting everyone to agree on the terminology we’re using? Still a battle, every day. (As a friendly reminder, if you believe in equal pay for equal work and an equal choice in what work you take on – you’re a feminist.)

In summary, if you like memoirs and those books which might be classified as Feminism 101, then this book might absolutely be for you. Otherwise, I’m sure you’ll find something which suits you better.