The Portable Feminist Reader
The Portable Feminist Reader is far from portable at nearly 600 pages, and is divided into nine sections. The first section, Laying a Foundation, was so dull it took weeks to get through it, until “The Higher Education of Women” by Anna Julia Cooper, a wonderful story about a remarkable Black woman who so eloquently defended the rights of girls and women to an education and personal autonomy. “Let our girls feel that we expect something more of them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in society.” In 1801, apparently, girls were not encouraged to learn to read, male society having determined females were meant for reproduction and service.
No book on feminism would be complete without a mention of Susan B. Anthony, who is credited with procuring women’s right to vote in the United States, in 1920, many years after other nations. Female tax paying citizens were allowed to vote in Sweden in 1718 and women deemed literate in Argentina were permitted to vote in 1862. Other nations where females had the right to vote include; Finland, the former Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Siam (Thailand), Denmark, Australia, and Latvia. The United States was late to the party for this human right.
Another interesting essay, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving: Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” is interesting, challenging the notions that women who choose to wear the veil are somehow mislead or diminished. There are women who choose the veil to simplify their lives and be removed from the male gaze.
“Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit is humorous, as with this description, “The house was great—if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets—a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave when our host said, ‘No stay a little longer so I can talk to you.’ He was an imposing man who had made a lot of money. So? I hear you’ve written a couple of books.” This familiar non-sequitur implies interest but is actually a man seeking to establish his superior authority. And here, her description of this gaze of which females are so familiar is hysterical. “He was already telling me about the very important book-with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority.”
For those of you with short attention spans or of limited life expectancy skip straight to part VII, “Sexual Politics” for your reward. This marathon tome reveals the gem of all the contributors, Simone De Beauvoir’s “Manifesto of the 343 Sluts,” which was published in La Nouvel Observateur on April 5, 1971. Here De Beauvoir argues so eloquently for the legalization of abortion, and thoroughly skewers the idea of permissible or acceptable abortions versus those that paternalism determines are not. “Therapeutic abortion requires good reasons to receive permission to have an abortion. To put it plainly, this means that we must earn the right to not have children. That decision as to whether to have them or not does not belong to us now any more than it did before.” And she flays various experts and religious leaders calling their “respect for life” an obscenity in their mouths.
This, of course, could explain why church attendance and religious affiliation continues to fall at a precipitous rate in the United States. After all, if one wants to be exposed to obscenities one hardly needs to attend a ritualized institution.
In our present era where the U.S. has been clawing back the rights of women and girls, this seems a fitting chapter to reacquaint ourselves with the real argument, which has nothing to do with women’s health or medical safety in restricting access to mifepristone or surgical abortion procedures. For if all of society really cared about women, why are pregnant women experiencing complications in Idaho being flown to Utah, because the attending physician in the hospital refuses to treat a pregnant woman if it means terminating the pregnancy to save her life?