Rebecca Traister

Another entry in the books about women's anger. The author makes a lot of good points, but the book is an excellent demonstration of why feminism has not succeeded as well as some of the other movements, why we still haven't gotten to the point of being considered equal. I don't know of any other movement where it is claimed the movement is for everyone; most are for the group they are supporting. This book seems more concerned with racism and homophobia at times. These are important issues, but there are dozens of groups out there devoted to these issues, and in feminism, they should be addressed only where they are relevant to feminism specifically. Feminism needs to be for women, all women, but women. I will say one thing: reading this book did at times make me good and mad. Unfortunately, not at the injustices being done but at the author for smugly laying everything at the hands of white women, a common tactic with white women, to blame the "other" white women. At times you would think she is the only white woman in the world who has ever seen the light and embraced anti-racism and anti-homophobia. This would be a better book if she kept to the subject of women's anger.… (mere)

I was really excited to read this book on why women aren't getting married any more. But I wasn't wowed. I found Traister's treatment of the subject to be very superficial -- focusing on what she and her friends were experiencing, with pretty limited deeper analysis. When she did turn to statistics, she employed a lot of motivated reasoning including interpretation of statistics that I didn't believe were significantly different. It was clear sometimes that she had a pet theory that she couldn't let go of, for instance, when she talked about how urbanization made single life easier, brushing off that the woman in her exemplary anecdote had to move out of NYC to Virginia to survive as a single mother. Also, her work really focused on singleness among highly educated, affluent white women. She had a chapter on African American women, but the breezy anecdotal tone of the book really didn't translate well to this. Even more than other chapters it felt like she interviewed one black woman (Nancy Giles) and generalized from there in favor of her hypothesis. Traister herself is married and waited until she was married to have children, and she really resists acknowledging that the postponement of both marriage and children among highly educated, affluent women is a different beast socially, psychologically and from a woman's liberation perspective than the childbirth before (and instead) of marriage among less privileged women. She references [b:Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage|73305|Promises I Can Keep Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage|Kathryn Edin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438872307l/73305._SY75_.jpg|1500229] a few times, but keeps returning to "my life is great! I have a career and female friends and a husband and kids. Isn't single life amazing for women?!… (mere)