3 stars
Includes essays, articles, and lectures ranging from 2008 to 2014, Men Explain Things to Me examines various issues associated when gender and sex. Issues discussed revolve mainly around men’s perceived entitlement to women’s bodies and women’s time, the resulting discrimination and too-often violence against women, and the silencing of women’s voices.
The essays range from events of the time period and media reactions to them, as well as more academic examinations. I especially enjoyed the essays, “Men Explain Things to Me”, “Cassandra Among the Creeps”, and “#YesAllWomen: Feminists Rewrite the Story”.
The essays may have been more powerful when they were first published. Reading this in 2023, so much has happened since they were originally written, published, then republished. Because of that, many of them didn’t hit quite as well as they might have. Most of the points felt obvious and the entire collection reads as playing things pretty safe.
Because of the range of essays, it’s a bit hard to pinpoint the tone as well. Some are in-your-face about the everyday occurrences of violence against women while others meander such as the analysis of Virginia Woolf. As the essays/articles were written for different purposes, they didn’t necessary come together into a cohesive collection. Taken out of their original context, specifically the Virginia Woolf piece (a lecture from the Nineteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf), the pieces didn’t always find their mark in this reprinting.
Solnit also doesn’t address the issues discussed from an intersectional viewpoint. She focuses quite specifically on gender and sex. When sexuality, race, and class do come up, the analysis doesn’t go beyond basic generalizations. Other aspects such as disability are not addressed at all.
An okay collection that examines issues of sex and gender, but I wanted more depth of analysis. The points feel fairly shallow and obvious. Perhaps a fine starter for people interested in such issues without having to be fully immersed, but Solnit’s essays don’t challenge the reader in such beneficially ways as many other authors (such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Roxane Gay) have more recently.