Reviews for Madcaps, screwballs, and con women

The average rating for Madcaps, screwballs, and con women based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-18 00:00:00 Garett Horgen Yet another book I've owned for far too long without reading in its entirety. Like many other feminist books, this one I purchased for a specific author/essay, and I never got around to reading the remainder of the book. As in all multi-author essay collections, the quality varied between authors. The first three essays seemed more or less repetitive. Interesting, yes, but theoretical and academic. (And those authors have a serious beef with Alice Walker). I've always struggled greatly with academic feminist works that fail to actually suggest what normal people can do with this information to improve our society/country/state/city/neighborhood/world. (Yet another reason I didn't end up in academia). This felt fairly true of the first three essays. The last two didn't linger on concrete steps for improving anything either, but they were much more practically written--less academic, more call-to-action. I could say more about those two essays, but suffice it to say that I really enjoyed reading both of those--and I'll continue to hold onto this book for the sake of those 2 essays.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-12-15 00:00:00 David Collins This book is excellent and I recommend it to everybody. Wolf analyzes in a clear, differentiated and personally honest manner the double standards and intellectual dishonesty of a particular branch of feminism - that which cast women in the roles of eternal, saintly victims and declares men to be "the enemy" - and how this "victim feminism" has damaged and still damages the struggle for women's rights. She makes it clear that women do not have to proove that they are somehow better than men in order to claim their fair share of the world - we are entitled to it simply because we are human beings. The passages about acknowledging men's full humanity as well as women's and about embracing a positive concept of female sexuality are particularly inspiring. If I have a problem with the book it is the way power and money are presented as the primary solution. I love to see sucessful women and I cheer them on where I can, and I completely agree with Wolf that women can and should aspire to positions of power and wealth. However, it remains a fact of life that serious power and wealth can only ever be acquired by a few. The majority of women (like the majority of men) will remain ordinary citizens with moderate financial means. I'd like Wolf to explain more clearly what her vision for this majority is.