Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Palgrave Macmillan (2007), Edition: 1st, Hardcover, 240 pages
Description
Contrary to clich�?s about the end of feminism, Deborah Siegel argues that younger women are not abandoning the movement but reinventing it. After forty years, is feminism today a culture, or a cause? A movement for personal empowerment, or broad-scale social change? Have women achieved equality, or do we still have a long way to go?
User reviews
LibraryThing member BeverlyRose
A comprehensive overview of 20th century feminism. Helps to clarify the various movements within feminism for those of us who didn't get to live through its most infamous years.
LibraryThing member kristenn
This seemed to be a good U.S. Feminist History 101 sort of book, which is at my level. It's unfortunate (and telling?) that the bibliography is full of anthologies from the mid-90s but not much of anything more current.
LibraryThing member alycias
Reading for review in Feminist Collections...
LibraryThing member Florinda
“Sisterhood is powerful,” the second-wave feminists of the 1960s and ‘70s declared. I have, and am, a sister, and I believe this; my sister and I are very good friends. But we haven’t always had the easiest relationship - it’s pretty unusual to have sisterhood without sibling rivalry. In
Feminism may appear to be fragmented in various directions these days - because it is - but Siegel shows that even from the beginning of the second wave, feminist “sisters” never spoke with a single, unified voice. While there was agreement on the need for change to improve women’s lives, there were many opinions on what sort of changes were needed and how to go after them. Did women need to change how they saw themselves, or how society saw them? Did they want legal, economic, or sexual equality - and did they need to choose among them? Should they work for change within the system, through traditional political channels, or embrace the concept that “the personal is political” and push for radical reforms through less conventional methods? Were men the source and cause of everything that held women back, so that embracing feminism equated to rejecting men? (For some feminists, this was true, and lesbianism was one way in which they expressed that the personal and political were equal.) While the 1970s and the decades that followed saw progress made in the areas of economic and educational opportunity, personal protection, family law, and reproductive rights, the underlying debates went on.
These questions weren’t definitively answered, and in the 1980s, as the Equal Rights Amendment failed to be ratified and society became more conservative, they became increasingly academic and debated outside mainstream awareness. A generation came of age having benefited from what the second wave did accomplish, but not always fully aware of how it was accomplished; they revived the questions, sometimes ignorant of - or indifferent to - the fact they weren’t the first to ask them, and began to raise new ones. They disagreed - with their predecessors and with one another - on whether the personal really was political, what “sisterhood” meant in an era of focus on the individual over the community, and whether the work of feminism was even still necessary.
While Siegel essentially covers the same time period addressed by Gail Collins in When Everything Changed, her emphasis is much more specific and “inside:” her story is about what’s gone on within the feminist movement more than its effects outside it. And as fragmented as the movement is, I was very impressed by Siegel’s even-handed, balanced discussion; I didn’t get a sense that she was taking sides. The book is a “popular” history aimed at a general audience, and I found it highly accessible and fascinating reading, but with 289 endnotes to its 170 pages of text and more than 20 pages of references and additional resources, Siegel approaches it with academic discipline. Sisterhood, Interrupted is a survey, but one focused and detailed enough that I didn’t feel she shortchanged anything important. This was an enlightening and thought-provoking read that I’m glad to have liberated from TBR Purgatory after nearly two and a half years, and that I’d recommend for all young (and young-ish) feminists.
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Sisterhood, Interrupted, her history of contemporary feminism and its factions and friction, Deborah Siegel considers the ways in which the sisterhood analogy has united and divided women.Feminism may appear to be fragmented in various directions these days - because it is - but Siegel shows that even from the beginning of the second wave, feminist “sisters” never spoke with a single, unified voice. While there was agreement on the need for change to improve women’s lives, there were many opinions on what sort of changes were needed and how to go after them. Did women need to change how they saw themselves, or how society saw them? Did they want legal, economic, or sexual equality - and did they need to choose among them? Should they work for change within the system, through traditional political channels, or embrace the concept that “the personal is political” and push for radical reforms through less conventional methods? Were men the source and cause of everything that held women back, so that embracing feminism equated to rejecting men? (For some feminists, this was true, and lesbianism was one way in which they expressed that the personal and political were equal.) While the 1970s and the decades that followed saw progress made in the areas of economic and educational opportunity, personal protection, family law, and reproductive rights, the underlying debates went on.
These questions weren’t definitively answered, and in the 1980s, as the Equal Rights Amendment failed to be ratified and society became more conservative, they became increasingly academic and debated outside mainstream awareness. A generation came of age having benefited from what the second wave did accomplish, but not always fully aware of how it was accomplished; they revived the questions, sometimes ignorant of - or indifferent to - the fact they weren’t the first to ask them, and began to raise new ones. They disagreed - with their predecessors and with one another - on whether the personal really was political, what “sisterhood” meant in an era of focus on the individual over the community, and whether the work of feminism was even still necessary.
While Siegel essentially covers the same time period addressed by Gail Collins in When Everything Changed, her emphasis is much more specific and “inside:” her story is about what’s gone on within the feminist movement more than its effects outside it. And as fragmented as the movement is, I was very impressed by Siegel’s even-handed, balanced discussion; I didn’t get a sense that she was taking sides. The book is a “popular” history aimed at a general audience, and I found it highly accessible and fascinating reading, but with 289 endnotes to its 170 pages of text and more than 20 pages of references and additional resources, Siegel approaches it with academic discipline. Sisterhood, Interrupted is a survey, but one focused and detailed enough that I didn’t feel she shortchanged anything important. This was an enlightening and thought-provoking read that I’m glad to have liberated from TBR Purgatory after nearly two and a half years, and that I’d recommend for all young (and young-ish) feminists.
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LibraryThing member sublunarie
It's actually quite staggering how out-of-date this book already is, 15 years after it's publication.
Everything you need to know you can learn by just reading the Conclusion section at the end of the book. In this Siegel finally shows her hand, she is of the Second Wave and has a lot to say about
Other than the briefest mention, Siegel fails to touch on the intersectionality of oppressions that Third Wave feminism rallies around (this is truly a book about white women, for white women). This was not a far-out concept in 2007. I was there. We were talking about it ad naseum.
Perhaps most shocking to me - though this is incidental - is the moment in the conclusion where Siegel snipes at BUST editor Debbie Stoller by mentioning "[she] has since published a series of books about knitting". Exactly how feminist is it to imply that another successful woman is less-than for having an interest outside of feminism?? Had this moment been earlier in the book, honestly I probably would have DNFd. Alas it came in the last 10 pages. Not long after this Siegel graciously definies feminism for us - with extremely binary and gender-essentialist language.
There are a lot of pillars of feminist writing that have inspired people, hundreds of pieces that still hold up today. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.
Everything you need to know you can learn by just reading the Conclusion section at the end of the book. In this Siegel finally shows her hand, she is of the Second Wave and has a lot to say about
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what she thinks Third Wave Feminists are doing wrong. The clues were there in the preceding chapters, but for a book that is structured to set out a basic history of Second Wave and Third Wave, it reads a lot more like "Second Wave Feminists made a few mistakes but changed the world. Third Wave Feminists don't have any respect and only care about sex."Other than the briefest mention, Siegel fails to touch on the intersectionality of oppressions that Third Wave feminism rallies around (this is truly a book about white women, for white women). This was not a far-out concept in 2007. I was there. We were talking about it ad naseum.
Perhaps most shocking to me - though this is incidental - is the moment in the conclusion where Siegel snipes at BUST editor Debbie Stoller by mentioning "[she] has since published a series of books about knitting". Exactly how feminist is it to imply that another successful woman is less-than for having an interest outside of feminism?? Had this moment been earlier in the book, honestly I probably would have DNFd. Alas it came in the last 10 pages. Not long after this Siegel graciously definies feminism for us - with extremely binary and gender-essentialist language.
There are a lot of pillars of feminist writing that have inspired people, hundreds of pieces that still hold up today. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.
Show Less
Physical description
240 p.
ISBN
1403973180 / 9781403973184
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