The Female Thing: Dirt, Envy, Sex, Vulnerability
by: Laura Kipnis
Published by: Vintage Books
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Reviewed by Nick Capo, Assistant Professor of English, Illinois College
This book is a valuable attempt to summarize the state of “the female psyche…in the aftermath of second-wave feminism and partway to gender equality.” After a brief preface, Kipnis explores the paradox of female compliance/complicity existing simultaneously with feminism’s demands for equality. This exploration unfolds within four chapters, which compose what Kipnis calls “a catalog of fetters, a chronicle of impasses.”
Holding a professorship in media studies at Northwestern University, Laura Kipnis is known for her aggressive humor and honesty regarding gender issues. Some reviewers, perhaps most notably Alexandra Jacobs in the New York Times, have criticized this book for its brevity and lack of theoretical density, but these critics are imposing inapplicable standards of judgment. An earlier book—Against Love: A Polemic—offers a way to understand Kipnis’ intention in this new book. She is less interested in constructing an air-tight logical case than in using selective logic to reveal the ambivalence and indecision that many women feel about “the female situation.”
The chapter entitled “Envy” offers a hilarious parody of the cult of femininity while still challenging the tendency to focus all female disappointments on men (as the scapegoats) and raising the possibility that feminism inadvertently aided “scorched-earth labor practices.” In “Sex,” Kipnis explores some willingly forgotten realities about the history of medicine (e.g., genital massage as a treatment for unhappy/depressed women). In “Dirt,” she shows how the cult of domesticity coupled with the association of home-and-body cleanliness with virtue traps women (and men) in a no-win situation.
“Vulnerability,” the last and most controversial chapter, walks an argumentative tightrope. Kipnis argues persuasively that living with the constant awareness of rape inevitably shapes female behavior and psychology. On the other hand, she examines whether female victimization rhetoric is blinding many people to the possibility that “as many men as women are probably raped every year in the United States, and possibly more.” As Kipnis writes, “Okay, most of these men are incarcerated at the time—but it’s still rape.”
Armchair Interviews says: This book offers a provocative introduction to the debates percolating in many households and classrooms.
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