AUTHOR: various, edited by Naomi Wolf
CATEGORY: Non-Fiction
PUBLISHED: May 23rd, 2017
GENRE: Essays, Feminism, Social Commentary
PREMISE: A collection of essays, articles written in the past year or so that center around sexism and wolf whistle politics.
MY REVIEW: So this is yet another essay collection. This one is a very quick read, it's less then two hundred pages so it shouldn't take long too read. It's like most collections where some things in it are better then others. This one had a lot of good ones, but also one or two that...where honestly kind of reaching and not really written well.
But there where two that stood out for me. One was the essay where the book gets its title from. That one described what Wolf Whistle politics is and went even further into coded language which I think is something we all need to take a long hard look at. Personally, I feel like coded language is one of the many reasons sexism/racism etc. has managed to survive despite our many efforts to get rid of it. Bigots and sexists got smart and realized they couldn't be up front about their crap anymore and so they started getting more subtle in the way they did things. They do it in such away that lets them go "no no, that's not bigotry/sexism! Because like I'm not directly saying I think you're inferior to me!" but they are heavily implying it. The subtlety also allows for other people to look the other way and pretend it doesn't exist. See all the "Ugh SJWs are so over-sensitive" comments.
The other essay that stood out was one that went into the history of conservative politics and how the Democratic Party and Republican Party basically switched policies/interests in the sixties/seventies. I kind of wish everyone would read this, especially Republicans who like to brag about how they got rid of slavery. Sorry, you didn't. The Republican party in Lincoln's time was incredibly different then the Republican Party of today. Also please don't go acting like this means your party wasn't racist. there were Republicans very much against the abolition of slavery. Just because people didn't want to own slaves, didn't mean they weren't racist.
So this one was a bit of a mixed bag. There were several good essays/articles in here though and I do think the good far outweighs the bad. So if you're looking for some essays to read, this is an interesting one to look into.
WHO SHOULD READ: Feminists, those interested in current events
MY RATING: Four out of Five
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