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Jun
08
Book Review—Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists edited by Courtney E. Martin & J. Courtney Sullivan
2010 at 7am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Published May 2010 by Seal Press
Seeking inspiration for a novel she was writing a few years ago, J. Courtney Sullivan sent an email to several friends asking them, “What was the moment that made you a feminist? Was there one person, event, book, or idea that made it happen?” The conversation that followed was so fruitful that she decided to keep it going, and Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists was born.
In Click, editors Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan present twenty-nine essays by young feminists from all walks of life with the intention “to collage together a picture of contemporary young feminists…to discover what it is that still brings a diversity of young people to try on the feminist label despite the obvious risks.” The collection they’ve compiled is inspiring, insightful, and funny in all the right places, and I had to resist the urge to shout, “Preach on!” as I read it.
The voices in Click are as strong as they are varied, and the themes that emerge—the desire to break boundaries and prove men wrong; the need to create a personal feminism that is different from our mothers’; the struggle to balance sexual empowerment with feminist strength; and the tension created by identifying as feminist and as a member of another minority group—offer something for everyone. I saw myself and every feminist I know in the pages of Click, and that speaks to how well Martin and Sullivan succeeded in fulfilling their mission with this book….even if very few of the pieces are actually about singular moments of realization.
Rather than try to sum up twenty-nine fabulous essays in what would doubtless become a superlong review, I’ll now share some of the themes and excerpts that spoke to me, just to give you a taste of what you can find.
Many of the women featured in Click relate their initial reluctance to take on the feminist label to the fact that their mothers were feminists, and, as Jessica Valenti puts it in “I Was An Obnoxious Teenage Feminist,”
To call myself a feminist was to identify with my mother.
In “Not My Mother’s Hose,” Courtney E. Martin recalls meeting Jennifer Baumgardner (author of Manifesta, a book that changed my life and many others) and experiencing her “click” upon realizing that modern feminism means that women can be both smart and sexy. That fishnet stockings and high heels are just as acceptable and empowering as menswear slacks and practical shoes.
This wasn’t the swishy skirt feminism that my mom had manifested at her once-a-month women’s groups. This was contemporary, witty, brash, even a little sexy. This was who I wanted to be.
While my own mother didn’t outwardly identify as a feminist (a topic that Click also touches on), she and my dad raised me with the firm belief that women can be anything they want to be and are just as strong and capable as men. I came to my click moment later than many because the feminist ideas were already there, I just didn’t label them as such. Winter Miller addresses this phenomenon in “I Was Not Aborted and Further Miscellanea,” saying:
The net result of the parents I had is that there was no aha moment when it came to being a feminist, a democrat…these values were the ones that humans were supposed to have. If you thought you should dress a girl in pink and a boy in blue you were obviously some kind of backwoods asshole.
How do you not just instantly love that? Awesome.
Possibly because I’ve always considered myself a feminist, I’ve never thought much about how I became one. Click gave me an opportunity to think more deeply about the moments and experiences that helped me the define the feminism that I live daily, and it reminded me that women are not the only ones who suffer from constricting definitions of gender. As Jordan Berg Powers says in “Cross-Stitch and Soap Operas Following Football,”
When you put one gender into a box, you create a companion box for the other gender…men are also cheated by the boxes they have to fit into.
I’ve long been interested in the ways that our society’s strict definition of masculinity (which is something we don’t talk about often) is tied to our ideas about femininity and womanhood. In “The Women’s Center,” Olessa Pindak describes taking a course on masculinity and realizing that, “it was the first time I had thought that it was hard to be a man, too—that any time a society had prescribed roles for its people, it was unfair.”
The strict definition of masculinity is also responsible for many writers experiencing their click moments when they decided to prove the boys wrong and do something they were told they couldn’t do. For Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne, whose piece is titled “Killing in the Name Of,” it happened on her eleventh birthday, when she insisted on going hunting, an eleventh birthday tradition usually reserved for the boys in her family.
I became a gun-toting, camo-wearing eleven-year-old feminist the day I decided that I was going to do exactly what men told me I could not.
And for Collen Lutz Clemens, it happened on the football field during a marching band practice. In “The Right Pitch,” she says,
The day Ralph Ciotti said a girl couldn’t play the tuba, a feminist angel got her wings.
Other women in the collection write about click moments that were sparked by sports, abortion rights, and even Kurt Cobain’s death. Black and Latina feminists describe the struggle to take on the feminist label while maintaining their cultural identities and defending their choices to women who didn’t understand or agree. There are funny pieces in Click and sad pieces, pieces that will warm your heart and those that will fill you with what one writer calls a “righteous feminist anger,” and they are all good. Great, even, because ultimately, as Marni Grossman says in “Feminism, Warts and All,”
Feminism is not about perfection. It’s about the power of speaking one’s truth.
I’ll be recommending Click to every woman I know, whether she identifies as a feminist or not, and I’m sure I’ll be giving many copies as gifts, especially as my nieces approach their teenage years. I appreciated something about every essay in this collection, and I relished the opportunity to spend time reflecting on my personal definition of feminism and the experiences that shaped it. 4.5 out of 5.
Learn more at the Click website, and feel free to chime in below with stories of your own click moments (or, I suppose, discussion of why you don’t consider yourself a feminist). I’ll be blogging mine later this week. And yes, men can be feminists, too!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Rebecca Schinsky
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This sounds fabulous, judging from the quotes and your great review. This is a topic that is close to my heart and I’d love to read it.
Looking forward to reading your Click moment too
This book sounds incredible. I don’t know WHY I haven’t picked it up yet, but there you go, I’m slow. It is definitely on my I WILL BUY IT THIS SUMMER list, which means a lot considering I have to read 10 off the tbr pile to qualify for a new book
Great review!
For me, I was raised with the expectation that girls and boys can both do whatever they want. The term feminist had nothing to do with it. From what I had seen it was a dirty and bad word, and something you didn’t want to be. It wasn’t until university, I think, that I read more feminist work and realized hey, this is SO not a bad thing! And proudly took on the label of feminist.
.-= Amy´s last blog ..Review: Gentlemen by Michael Northrop =-.
I was raised to think that I was a feminist. My parents were activists for all sorts of liberal causes, and my mother was always leery of women who said they weren’t feminists-just assuming the label had become negative but that every women wanted equal rights. I am excited that this conversation is going on and that this book did so in a great, thoughtful way. It sounds wonderful.
.-= Jen-Girls Gone Reading´s last blog ..Review: The Forgotten Garden =-.
I had a very similar conversation recently with a woman who said, “I’m not a feminist or anything, but the new abortion laws are really scary.” And I was like, “Listen, lady, if you’re deeply angry about women being denied the right to make decisions about their bodies, you ARE a feminist.” The reluctance to take on the label is so interesting to me and something I hope conversations like this can eradicate.
That feeling you’re describing of not wanting the label because of what you *think* it means comes up over and over in the book. I think you’ll enjoy this one.
I need to read this book! Like you, Rebecca, I’ve always had feminist ideals but never really labeled it as such. I think my actual “click” moment was taking a women’s studies class in college and realizing that all the feelings I’d had my entire life actually had a label, called feminism. That was about the time I started reading feminist blogs and searching out feminist books. I will probably be purchasing this book soon, because it’s definitely one I’d love to add to my collection. Thanks for the review!
.-= Heather @ Book Addiction´s last blog ..Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein =-.
This sounds amazing, and might help to take the bad taste that was Sullivan’s (very un-feminist, in my opinion!) novel out of my mouth. Thanks for this review!
.-= Connie´s last blog ..Pomp and circumstance =-.
I haven’t read her novel, Connie, but now I’m very intrigued.
Sounds like a powerful read — and something my sister would enjoy, too! She took several women’s studies classes in college and we would often have long, winding late-night conversations about themes they were discussing.
I’m particularly attracted to the quote from Jordan Berg Powers — society’s definitions of “masculinity” and manhood are really fascinating, too, like the old adage about “boys don’t cry” — or its “A League Of Their Own” counterpart, “There’s no crying in baseball.” Well, why, hmm?
Looks like I’ll be doing some more reading to find out!
.-= Meg´s last blog ..Book review: ‘The One That I Want’ by Allison Winn Scotch =-.
I think my “click” moment was when I read Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook in university. It represents an outdated model of feminism but how it portrays women as second class citizens still rings true.
Sounds like a great book.
.-= Bronwyn´s last blog ..A Journey Round My Skull: Unfinished But Still Love These Oddball Medical Memoirs =-.
Thanks for such a fab post! I am enjoying the conversation. As a feminist who lives in the Bible Belt and is married to a preacher (don’t worry, he’s a feminist too), it’s always interesting. “Feminist” is sometimes a dirty word around here. I think my “click” moment was in college when I read A Return to Modesty by Wendy Shalit. Her book made feminism and religion compatible- differentiating between patriarchy and misogyny while offering a smart, funny, daring insight on female sexuality.
Thanks for the review! I’ll definitely have to check this one out.
I think I first heard this book was in the works a while ago, and I’m definitely interested – I didn’t realize it was out yet, though!
I’m at least a half-generation older than the authors and most of the commenters here thus far (I think), which means I was a kid/teen during the heights of the 1960s-’70s Second Wave feminism. I don’t recall ever having a “click” moment, because I was actually seeing some of the changes happening around me – by the time I was in my teens, it was a “duh” that I identified as a feminist. It just MADE SENSE that girls should have the same opportunities – and rights – as boys; same for women and men, of course.
What’s killed me is the backlash against the momentum of the second wave – the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, the rise of social conservatism, and the reluctance of younger women to call themselves feminists.
I love reading your most enthusiastic reviews, Rebecca – thanks for this one!
.-= Florinda´s last blog ..Wishing and Waiting: The Wishlist (Weekly Geeks 2010-20) =-.
Between you and Kim, my non-fiction want to read list is going to be a mile long! Billy needs to get his hooves in gear and read faster so I can delegate!
.-= softdrink´s last blog ..A Girl’s Guide to Modern European Philosophy =-.
I love the quotation from Winter Miller – that was exactly my experience growing up! It was quite a shock when I got a little older and realized not everybody professed feminism.
.-= Jenny´s last blog ..Pyongyang, Guy Delisle =-.
I like books like this – varying voices on a similar theme. I just started reading This I Believe which has famous, infamous, and totally normal people write a short essay finishing the title’s opening statement.
.-= Trisha´s last blog ..Book Review: Matched =-.
I’ve seen THIS I BELIEVE in bookstores but never really knew what it was about. Thanks for sharing!
[...] Book Review—Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists edited by Courtney E. Martin & J. Court… [...]
This sounds amazing! I definitely fall into the camp where my parents did not self-identify as feminists (although I’m proud to say they do now!), but they raised me to an independent-minded woman who knew she could do anything she wanted. Despite this knowledge, I realized I was a feminist (and embraced convincing our generation it is not a bad thing) I first read Marilyn Frye. I majored in Women’s Studies largely because of my love for Frye, Angela Y. Davis, Pearl Cleage and Audre Lorde. I’ll have to pick this one up soon!
.-= nomadreader (Carrie)´s last blog ..book review: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver =-.
[...] The Book Lady reviews Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists, and shares her own “click” moment here. [...]
Just wanted to let you know that I included a link to this post over at Kate’s Library as part of my Friday Five!
.-= Kate´s last blog ..The Friday Five! =-.
This sounds absolutely fabulous! And I think I need to read this book. I am not sure what made me a feminist. I have to admit that I sometimes still cringe a little when I hear the word, mostly because for others it often holds so many negative connotations. And I don’t want to go through the whole process of having to explain that it is “not like that”.
I think my mother has been a big influence in what my viewpoints currently are. I wonder if, like you mentioned in your review, the unwillingness of our generation in general to call themselves feminist is because of the former generations use of the term?
.-= Iris´s last blog ..Bloggiesta – Starting Line =-.
[...] Book Review—Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists edited by Courtney E. Martin & J. Court… [...]
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