Jessa Crispin

Outspoken critic Jessa Crispin delivers a searing rejection of contemporary feminism . . . and a bracing manifesto for revolution. Are you a feminist? Do you believe women are human beings and that they deserve to be treated as such? That women deserve all the same rights and liberties bestowed upon men? If so, then you are a feminist . . . or so the feminists keep insisting. But somewhere along the way, the movement for female liberation sacrificed meaning for acceptance, and left us with a banal, polite, ineffectual pose that barely challenges the status quo. In this bracing, fiercely intelligent manifesto, Jessa Crispin demands more. Why I Am Not A Feminist is a radical, fearless call for revolution. It accuses the feminist movement of obliviousness, irrelevance, and cowardice—and demands nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression. Praise for Jessa Crispin, and The Dead Ladies Project "I'd follow Jessa Crispin to the ends of the earth." --Kathryn Davis, author of Duplex "Read with caution . . . Crispin is funny, sexy, self-lacerating, and politically attuned, with unique slants on literary criticism, travel writing, and female journeys. No one crosses genres, borders, and proprieties with more panache." --Laura Kipnis, author of Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation "Very, very funny. . . . The whole book is packed with delightfully offbeat prose . . . as raw as it is sophisticated, as quirky as it is intense." --The Chicago Tribune

A Feminist Manifesto

Why I Am Not a Feminist

Are you a feminist? Do you believe women are human beings and that they deserve to be treated as such? That women deserve all the same rights and liberties bestowed upon men? If so, then you are a feminist... or so the feminists keep insisting. But somewhere along the way, the movement for female liberation sacrificed meaning for acceptance, and left us with a banal, polite, ineffectual pose that barely challenges the status quo. In this bracing, fiercely intelligent manifesto, Jessa Crispin demands more.

Maggie Gordon

“Radical change is scary. It’s terrifying, actually. And the feminism I support is a full-on revolution. Where women are not simply allowed to participate in the world as it already exists—an inherently corrupt world, designed by a patriarchy to subjugate and control and destroy all challengers—but are actively able to reshape it. Where women do not simply knock on the doors of churches, of governments, of capitalist marketplaces and politely ask for admittance, but create their own religious systems, governments, and economies. My feminism is not one of incremental change, revealed in the end to be The Same As Ever, But More So. It is a cleansing fire.” 

Why I am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto has a horribly click-baity title which has caused much controversy. However, I think it's an important addition to the mainstream feminist conversation. Make no mistake, Crispin is a feminist, but she's a feminist according to an older definition of the word, one that requires more than Twitter identification. To her, feminism is a revolution. Feminism seeks to change the world. Feminism doesn't give a fuck about your lipstick. Feminism is around to make people uncomfortable with the way the world works because the way the world works is messed up and terrible. 

Crispin's central thesis is that mainstream feminism, whether you call it white, power, or privileged feminism, is bullshit. It is about making people feel good about their choices which is a far cry from the riots and angry protests of the past. She attacks the way that feminism has become universal and therefore meaningless, yet also oddly exclusive and toxic. It's a strange, ineffectual contradiction, and instead of a revolution, feminism is about marching with weird hats and making each other feel supported in our individual choices. 

Crispin basically tells this version of feminism to go to hell. She tackles the reductive thinking in a lot of feminist communities, challenges our insider/outsider thinking, and screams for people to engage in a deeper, more self-critical analysis. This is a very accessible book in that you do not need to have read feminist canon to understand it, but it made my academic heart sing because it echos a lot of what I feel trying to step between my different feminist worlds. All the in-fighting and vocabulary policing and cliques superseding actual work. Being proud to sign a change.org petition, but never actually putting hours or money into real, feminist activism. Disdainfully rejecting old feminist theory without ever actually have engaged with it. 

On that note, one of Crispin's arguments that I felt was exceptionally important was how harmful for the movement it is to erase and destroy the lessons of older feminists from the "second wave". She makes some compelling arguments about how there is a lot of value in the body of literature and work that was created in this time period that is being unfairly dismissed as divisive or too radical, depending on who you ask. Or it is rejected in full for imperfections. So many conversations and lessons that women have already had are ignored. So much brilliant, challenging thinking thrown away uncritically. It's a sad and frustrating phenomena.

Is the book perfect? No. And I think Crispin would tell readers that's part of what we need to be comfortable with. Feminism will always be a site of discomfort and struggle as we rip down the walls of a society that could be so much better. And we should expect that there will be sites of struggle over what our new society should be. We've learned this lesson when we saw how feminism dealt with lesbians and trans people. But reductive thinking and ignoring our past has made our reactions to sites of conflict a giant clusterfuck of not working. It's easier to grab the pussy hat or shout at someone on the internet than get into the difficult, practical work of building this better world. If Crispin's work makes you uncomfortable, there's probably a good reason for that. She's not talking to every feminist in the world, but I think most of us can take something valuable from her screed.

Why I Am Not a Feminist A Feminist Manifesto

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