Paperback, 112 pages
en-Latn-US language
Published Oct. 29, 2019 by Verso.
Everyone is female "When I say that everyone is female, I mean very simply that everyone wants to be a woman. What one does with this desire is what we call gender." So begins Andrea Long Chu's investigation into gender and desire, females and bodies, radical dreams and philosophical pessimism, and feminism as a form of political suicide. Feminism, Chu argues, is an untenable claim, and "when you make an untenable claim, your desire is showing, like a shy tattoo peeking out from a sleeve." Written in a series of linked theses, this is a provocative and searching text from our most exciting new public intellectual, a self described "sad trans girl in Brooklyn." Chu wears her heart on her sleeve with wit, style, and a manic searching grace.
This book was absurd. Far more absurd than the blurb on the back led me to believe. I did not expect a book about Valerie Solanas when I picked it up. That was a surprise, and the good kind. I would recommend this book to anyone willing to talk seriously about absurd things and laugh at serious things. Someone for which gender is a mindfuck.
I started this book expecting a "serious" work of feminist theory. At some point I realized I had started on the wrong footing, so I reread it as a personal essay. That works way better. The book kiiinda presents itself as laying out a theory of gender (in short, the theory that everyone is female), but it doesn't really commit to that and the theory doesn't really work if you take it seriously - which I don't think the author wants us to. The book is actually an autobiographical reflection on the author's transition, told through her personal relation to Valerie Solanas' (tiny) body of work. I enjoyed it a lot!
