Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto

Are you a feminist? Do you believe women are human beings and that they deserve all the same rights as men? If so, then you are a feminist . . .

Or are you? Is it really that simple? Outspoken cultural critic Jessa Crispin says somewhere along the way, the movement for female liberation sacrificed meaning for acceptance, and left us with a banal, polite, ineffectual pose that barely challenges the status quo.

In this bracing, fiercely intelligent manifesto, she demands more: nothing less than the total dismantling of the system of oppression—and of what people currently think of as “feminism.”

‘The author's ferocious critique effectively reframes the terms of any serious discussion of feminism. You'll never trust a you-go-girl just-lean-in bromide again. Forget busting glass ceilings. Crispin has taken a wrecking ball to the whole structure.’ —Kirkus starred review

‘Feminists have, in fact, become polite insiders, and Crispin is here to show them how to punch their way out. A rallying manifesto; start swinging.’ —Library Journal

‘Rabble-rousing, impolitic, and eloquent, Why I Am Not a Feminist models the latitudes and freedoms it wants us all—us women, us feminists, us humans—to embody. Enough with the safety-mongering, says Crispin: Let’s break stuff! Let’s get messy! Let’s make feminism radical again.’ —Laura Kipnis, Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation

‘Crispin is telling us that we have to imagine something better in order to build it. Feminism as self-absorption, as an add-on label to a new lifestyle, has got us … where exactly? Where we are now. Stalled. Look how quickly we can go backwards. When did feminism get so small? When it became polite, unthreatening and marketable. Crispin blasts through all this by asking us to think big, properly scarily big.’ —Suzanne Moore, Guardian

‘The point of Why I Am Not a Feminist isn’t really that Crispin is not a feminist; it’s that she has no interest in being a part of a club that has opened its doors and lost sight of its politics—a club that would, if she weren’t so busy disavowing it, invite Kellyanne Conway in….Crispin’s argument is bracing, and a rare counterbalance; where feminism is concerned, broad acceptability is almost always framed as an unquestioned good.’ —Jia Tolentino, New Yorker