Living a Feminist Life

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Race might seem immaterial or less material if you are white; gender might seem immaterial or less material if you are a cis man; sexuality might seem immaterial or less material if you are straight; (dis)ability might seem immaterial or less material if you are able-bodied, and so on. Animates the hope that women might break the walls between us and transcend our different standpoints. And we might be perpetually reassigned; reminders of our assignment punctuate our lives like grammar. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

This is by far one of the best works of feminist theory I have ever read, and that's coming from a long-term student of women's studies. As Alison Jaggar describes, "Only when we reflect on our initially puzzling irritability, revulsion, anger, or fear may we bring to consciousness our 'gut-level' awareness that we are in a situation of coercion, cruelty, injustice or danger" (1996, 181; see also Spelman 1989). This section concludes with a compelling analysis of lesbian feminism as a wilful politics of action and care. As a lesbian woman of color, Ahmed incorporates intersectionality into her analysis, examining how multiple forces of oppression intertwine to affect women of color, queer women, queer women of color, and other women at the margins in academic settings and in daily life. Ahmed holds particular words up to the light and lets their unsuspected facets gleam, polishing their queer potential.It has often been the case that I do indeed find myself decrying horrors that should never exist in a civilized world, to be met with absolute indifference. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. I listened to this as an audiobook because it is referenced so often in my very favorite podcast Secret Feminist Agenda. She ends the book with two practical survival guides to endure the onslaught of injustices feminists of conscience are sure to encounter as they navigate through patriarchal society.

Again and again, Ahmed’s perspective deepened my understanding of what was happening right here, right now When Ahmed wrote that perceiving women of color contributions as interruptions defines feminism as centered on white women, a conversation that is not theirs. You have to get closer to the feeling; but once you try to think about a feeling, how quickly it can recede. Girling is enacted not only through being explicitly addressed as a girl, but in the style or mode of address: because you are a girl, we can do this to you. I]n reading Living a Feminist Life, readers will find a companion, a vital guide to their killjoy survival kit.

Much of it is about reactions to feminists speaking up in private or public spaces, and how words (such as "killjoy") are used against feminists and how they can be retaken. The violence of judgments that tend to follow violence against women and girls has been documented by feminists over generations. She advocates for speaking up against injustice, for breaking bridges with toxic people, and finding like-minded feminists with similar values.

Being estranged from one’s own life can be how a world reappears, becoming odd…to become conscious of possibility can involve mourning for its loss” (Ahmed, page 47). Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Now, we all have our part to play, and I do not feel too guilty burying myself in volumes of structural analysis/systems-thinking. Living a Feminist Life is a work of embodied political theory that defies the conventions of feminist memoir and self-help alike.How we are perceived as making trouble when everything is "supposedly" fine and dandy, how our pointing out sexism and/or racism is judged as a wish to direct attention to ourselves, and how eyes roll when we dare to protest injustice and oppression. To be assigned a sex in this binary system is a way of being directed toward a future, as I explore in more detail in chapter 2 . Not to be assaulted: maybe you might try to close yourself off, to withdraw from proximity, from proximity to a potential. If feminism allows us to redirect our emotions towards different objects, our emotions can become their objects.