Hilarious takedown of pop feminism

This year, my book club did a Book Swap for our December/Christmas meeting. We’ve done a Friendsgiving for a few years in a row, but this was the first time we’d done anything for Christmas. J, F’s husband, insisted that he was going to do his own book swap and get books for all of us. None of us took him seriously, until we arrived at his and F’s house and sure enough, there was a wrapped present with a label in his handwriting for each of us. After the official swap, he passed out his presents to each of us. And what a hoot it was. L, a fairly conservative New Englander, received a coloring book called The Swear Word (which, incidentally, I now need). C received a book called F**k Meditation, and I received How to Win at Feminism by the writers of Reductress, which calls itself the “Feminist Onion.” Excellent.

In short, How to Win at Feminism chronicles the privileged slactivism that comprises pop feminism at its finest and most tone-deaf. This book is a deliberately gleeful takedown of white feminism for its honoring of Lena Dunham, Taylor Swift, and other fashionable and insignificant items that conservative Baby Boomers think all Millennials are like. There are tons of pictures and fake testimonials that had me rolling.

I recommend this book for feminists with a thick skin and a wicked sense of humor. I think Michael Che’s liberal white lady sketch on SNL tried to be funny and poke fun at pop feminism, but he is (a) NOT the right conduit or woke enough to get away with it; and (b) mislabeling “liberal white lady” for what he is really poking fun at, which is pop feminism. This book, however, is exactly the right outlet to poke fun at the Taylor Swift snakes and white Beyhivers who think that liking Beyoncé is all you need to be intersectional.

Cross-posted to my blog.