“Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”

I was unable to march yesterday because I had to work so I opted to read Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of feminist essays, instead. This a powerful collection but I think the most powerful punch was just how dated it seemed despite being published only 3 years ago. There is no Trump or Weinstein and while there is a well crafted essay on #yesallwomen it felt lacking in a world where #metoo and the Time’s Up initiative have had such widespread coverage in both politics and Hollywood. How can something feel so old in such a short period of time? And how can so little have changed?

The 1992 election was nick-named “The Year of the Woman” and Carol Mosley Braun, still the only African American woman eve elected to the Senate, won office along with more female senators and congresswomen than ever before.

I have infinite hope that 2018 will be “The Second Year of the Woman” and their supporters.

This isn’t all denouncing mansplaining (a term Solnit is sometimes credited with coining but she didn’t) and Solnit drops some heavy truths on the reader writing at length about violence, rape and murder including some frightening statistics.

More than 11,766 corpses from domestic- violence homicides between 9/11 and 2012 exceed the number of deaths of victims on that day and all American soldiers killed in the “war on terror.”

Overall this is well written and I enjoyed appreciated Solnit’s time and effort in crafting these essays which should be sold as a companion piece to ‘We Should All Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 4.5 Stars- dinged for the Woolf essay which appears to be a problem spot for most reviewers.