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rsadelle(Note: Dewey Decimal number taken from the internet; my library doesn't even have this book.) Knowing the politics of the person who gave me Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, I suspected it might be the kind of book that would need to be hurled across the room, so I've put off reading it. When I picked out my books to travel with, I tossed this one in too with the thought that if it was all I had to read, I might actually do it. Today, I read my way through it without throwing it across the room, which is not to say that it doesn't have problems. The first couple of chapters are interesting in a history of feminism + statistics kind of way. But then it devolves into Levy's descriptions of portions of our oversexed culture. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; she's a good enough writer that it's fairly compelling. The biggest problem I had was that she never goes looking for anything else. She doesn't talk to lesbians who aren't part of the "boi" movement she criticizes. She doesn't seek out teenagers who aren't competing "to dress the skankiest" to ask them what they think. She doesn't talk to women who promote a picture of female sexuality that depends on women's desires.
The book has other problems too. First, trans issues. In the chapter "From Womyn to Bois," she talks about a specific bit of lesbian culture wherein young lesbians call themselves "bois" and act like stereotypical young men. She says, at the end of the chapter, "Women are invested in being 'like a man,' and in the case of FTMs, women are actually becoming men." Egads. I'm so startled by it that I'm not even sure what to say about it except for the "Wow" one of my coworkers told us he learned to use whenever someone says something that you just don't know how to respond to.
Secondly, class issues. Her sample teenagers all go to private schools. I don't think that's exactly representative of the culture as a whole. It reminds me of the old journalism joke that a trend is anything happening to the editor's friends. In other parts of the book, she talks about the women in Girls Gone Wild videos as "middle-class college kids on vacation." That's certainly a wider demographic than teenagers at private schools, but still doesn't tell us about the whole culture. Where are low-income women in Ariel Levy's world?
Thirdly, she never proposes any kind of solution. If you're going to decry a culture that you think is damaging to everyone, you should have some idea of what you'd like to see instead. Some kind of "here's what you can do" chapter would get you extra bonus points. But Levy never even starts to get there.
Perhaps the most startling bits of the book for me (aside from her lack of respect for trans people's choices) is the hometown connection. One of her examples of how raunch culture has expanded is that several Olympic athletes posed for Playboy in 2004. One of those is Haley Clark, who comes from Chico and used to date a friend of mine. Later on in the book, she visits The Man Show where "there wasn't enough space to fit all the guys who had lined up outside the studio, and a team of heavy-limbed boys in matching green T-shirts from Chico State were pumped to make it into the audience." (I'm not sure why, though, they would have green shirts; Chico State's color is red.) Later another audience member "was nearly hit in the head by the Chico Statesman behind him, who pumped his fist in the air in front of his crotch, semaphoring masturbation." I suppose it's nice to know that Chico State's reputation lives on.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend the book unless you're actually interested in the topic.
The book has other problems too. First, trans issues. In the chapter "From Womyn to Bois," she talks about a specific bit of lesbian culture wherein young lesbians call themselves "bois" and act like stereotypical young men. She says, at the end of the chapter, "Women are invested in being 'like a man,' and in the case of FTMs, women are actually becoming men." Egads. I'm so startled by it that I'm not even sure what to say about it except for the "Wow" one of my coworkers told us he learned to use whenever someone says something that you just don't know how to respond to.
Secondly, class issues. Her sample teenagers all go to private schools. I don't think that's exactly representative of the culture as a whole. It reminds me of the old journalism joke that a trend is anything happening to the editor's friends. In other parts of the book, she talks about the women in Girls Gone Wild videos as "middle-class college kids on vacation." That's certainly a wider demographic than teenagers at private schools, but still doesn't tell us about the whole culture. Where are low-income women in Ariel Levy's world?
Thirdly, she never proposes any kind of solution. If you're going to decry a culture that you think is damaging to everyone, you should have some idea of what you'd like to see instead. Some kind of "here's what you can do" chapter would get you extra bonus points. But Levy never even starts to get there.
Perhaps the most startling bits of the book for me (aside from her lack of respect for trans people's choices) is the hometown connection. One of her examples of how raunch culture has expanded is that several Olympic athletes posed for Playboy in 2004. One of those is Haley Clark, who comes from Chico and used to date a friend of mine. Later on in the book, she visits The Man Show where "there wasn't enough space to fit all the guys who had lined up outside the studio, and a team of heavy-limbed boys in matching green T-shirts from Chico State were pumped to make it into the audience." (I'm not sure why, though, they would have green shirts; Chico State's color is red.) Later another audience member "was nearly hit in the head by the Chico Statesman behind him, who pumped his fist in the air in front of his crotch, semaphoring masturbation." I suppose it's nice to know that Chico State's reputation lives on.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend the book unless you're actually interested in the topic.