Anna Kaufman

Why I Am Not a Feminist by Jessa Crispin

I barely know where to start with this; I only started taking notes halfway through and I may come back later with more thorough annotations, but for now, let's begin where Crispin ends -- with her own final summation of her basic thesis.

If you're not up for this, if you just want your life to be comfortable, if you just want to make your money and watch your shows and do as well as you can in this lifetime, then admit it to yourself. You are not a feminist. Just stand in your truth and get it over with.

By "this," of course, she means Feminism the Jessa Crispin Way -- a movement which apparently holds no room for people with mental or physical health issues, poor people (despite all the author's mentions of support!), or anyone who isn't strong enough to instantly dump all aspects of our patriarchal (and capitalist -- gosh you guys, I'm not providing any alternatives but isn't capitalism the worst?*) society out of our lives. Like, right now. Oh sorry, you still like "your shows"? I guess that means you can't sit at Jessa Crispin's non-feminist feminism table.

Crispin's main targets here seem to be #basicbitches and the internet. There's a definite "get off my lawn" quality to this book, and in Crispin's lavish defense of Second-Wave Feminism, to the point that she (twice!) bends over backward to defend the transphobic and racist comments of Second Wavers who just don't understand "relatively new" terms like intersectionality...before paragraphs later, decrying white feminists who don't understand intersectionality. (I also really enjoyed the chapter that began, "I just want to be clear that I don't give a fuck about your [men's] response to this book. Do not email me, do not get in touch," and ended, "Men can and must participate in this project [feminism].")

Look: on some level, we are all hypocrites. There is conflict and imperfection within all of us. Some of us, for example, might try to fight for feminism however we can: with how we relate to others, with how we relate to ourselves, with our money (hiss! yes, even evil money!), with our vote... And then, when we get tired, because this fight -- hell, just existing in this broken society -- is fucking exhausting, those selfsame some of us might want to watch Netflix for a little while. So sue us.

Crispin, while being a human person and thus subject to human weakness, seems to have no sympathy or room in her movement for weakness in others. Personally, I would rather have billions of imperfect feminists who are trying -- to unpack their own shit, to fight in any way they can -- than an elite crew of irreproachable feminists who never succumb to leg shaving** or online shopping or other tools of the patriarchy. But then, that's just me: a woman who could never be considered a feminist by Crispin's unimpeachable standards. 

*This is snotty, but Crispin's attack on people who want to "make their money" smacks to me of the rhetoric of someone who has never been poor.

**She brought it up.