A book full of personal experiences, stories and facts. Starting out as a sort of social experiment, to see if other women were experiencing these things on an everyday basis as well, Laura Bates set up the website ‘The Everyday Sexism Project’ where women and men could share their experiences of sexism (and especially general sexism, e.g. cat calling, demeaning co-workers, etc.). Will this book ultimately prove that sexism is mainly targeted at women?
The thing that makes this book so good is that there are so many real stories, written by real men and women. It’s the kind of book you could easily use in an argument against a misogynistic anti-feminist because at the end of the day, though the types of sexism may not be any lesser, women experience sexism a lot more than men, in school, in the streets, and in general everyday life, and you just do not see these kinds of things happening to men. Some of the stories are horrible but most, though bad, can seem somewhat mild to the eye – catcalling, women over 40 feeling ‘forgotten’ and the same situations being repeated and repeated and repeated. Something that lends itself to Laura is the fact that she has also experienced these things on an everyday basis so she can be sympathetic and understand what is happening to every person who posts on her website. She is also able to understand sexism towards men as well, acknowledging that there is such a thing and that, no, sexism does not only happen to women despite what some people make out that feminists think.
If I was going to critique this book in any way I would say that, despite it having a section on men, it needs to put some focus on one thing I am specifically mentioning, the generalization that only women, and not men, have anorexia (and I am deliberately only mentioning anorexia because I think it is one of the most important mental/body issue problems that has a sigma around it) and that it is so unrealistic for a male to also have feelings and issues with how they look, how they see themselves. I think that pointing this out in the book would bring a new level of understanding to it.
I will give this a book a 7/10 because it was good, an interesting read any day, but there are a few little, nagging things that it could have picked up on.
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Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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