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| August 28, 2014 Best of TomDispatch: Rebecca Solnit, The Archipelago of Arrogance
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: This has been a little crazy. In late May, we published our third Dispatch book (with Haymarket Books), Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me. Three months later, we’re already in our third printing and producing a hardcover version of the book for November that will include two more of her remarkable essays! We have photographic evidence that the book has made it to Kathmandu, Nepal, as well as onto indie bestseller lists here in the United States. Rave reviews have been rolling in. The book was tweeted by science fiction writer Neil Gaiman (2.02 million followers) and his wife, musician Amanda Palmer (1.04 million). Comedian Cameron Esposito chose to discuss the book in response to this question from the Advocate: “What is the single most important must-read book of the last decade?” Her response: “The most important book of the decade? Good gravy! I'm reading something awesome right now. It's called Men Explain Things to Me. I'm trying to figure out the author's name. It's an awesome book about gender politics. It's really short, you could get through it on a plane ride. It's going to make you very angry and very happy. It's, like, rocking my world.”
Okay, in case any of you need that name again (and if so, you can’t be a TomDispatch reader), it’s Rebecca Solnit and the book will rock your world, too. We here at TomDispatch have been rocked, that’s for sure, and this particular Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is anything but over. Rebecca adds that, amid all the discussion of the death of the book, “People are responding to content in print with a quality of attention that's different than even the strong responses some of these pieces got on the Internet. To me the success of this book is, among other things, a testament to the respect and focus that books still have in many readers's lives. In other words, books live!" To honor this breakthrough moment for our little DIY publishing dream, I’m bringing back that book’s now-classic 2008 title piece for its second bow as a “best of TomDispatch” selection, including Solnit’s 2012 (re)introduction to it. Have a good Labor Day! We’ll be back on Tuesday. Tom] One evening over dinner, I began to joke, as I often had before, about writing an essay called “Men Explain Things to Me.” Every writer has a stable of ideas that never make it to the racetrack, and I’d been trotting this pony out recreationally every once in a while. My houseguest, the brilliant theorist and activist Marina Sitrin, insisted that I had to write it down because people like her younger sister Sam needed to read it. Young women needed to know that being belittled wasn’t the result of their own secret failings; it was the boring old gender wars. So lovely, immeasurably valuable Sam, this one always was for you in particular. It wanted to be written; it was restless for the racetrack; it galloped along once I sat down at the computer; and since Marina slept in later than me in those days, I served it for breakfast and sent it to Tom later that day. That was April 2008 and it struck a chord. It still seems to get reposted more than just about anything I’ve written at TomDispatch.com, and prompted some very funny letters to this site. None was more astonishing than the one from the Indianapolis man who wrote in to tell me that he had “never personally or professionally shortchanged a woman” and went on to berate me for not hanging out with “more regular guys or at least do a little homework first,” gave me some advice about how to run my life, and then commented on my “feelings of inferiority.” He thought that being patronized was an experience a woman chooses to, or could choose not to have -- and so the fault was all mine. Life is short; I didn’t write back. Young women subsequently added the word “mansplaining” to the lexicon. Though I hasten to add that the essay makes it clear mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck. The battle for women to be treated like human beings with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of involvement in cultural and political arenas continues, and it is sometimes a pretty grim battle. When I wrote the essay below, I surprised myself in seeing that what starts out as minor social misery can expand into violent silencing and even violent death. Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to women, two Liberians and a Yemeni, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Which is to say, that safety and full participation is only a goal. This is a struggle that takes place in war-torn nations, but also in the bedroom, the dining room, the classroom, the workplace, and the streets. And in newspapers, magazines, and television, where women are dramatically underrepresented. Even in the online gaming arena women face furious harassment and threats of assault simply for daring to participate. That’s mostly symbolic violence. Real violence, the most extreme form of silencing and destroying rights, takes a far more dire toll in this country where domestic violence accounts for 30% of all homicides of women, annually creates about two million injuries, and prompts 18.5 million mental health care visits. It’s in Cairo’s Tahrir Square too,brutal gender violence where freedom and democracy had been claimed. Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty. I’m grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless. Rebecca (August 19, 2012) Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn't Get in Their Way |
