Popular Feminism is a Fight Club, Only NOT
Among the many pop-feminist, girl-power-esque books out last year, The Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace by Jessica Bennett, reviewed in the New York Times (lucky Jessica), tells women how to fight the power, with the help of your girl gang. Only without fighting.
Fighting, being mean, and anger are actually popular on the bookshelves in the pop feminism aisle. Here are some of the titles you’ll find:
—Fight Like a Girl by Clementine Ford
—Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
—Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini
Clearly, there is something appealing about the idea of empowerment, being powerful, resisting sexism, and fighting. These seem to define feminist empowerment today. The only problem is that none of these books is actually about learning how to fight.
The feminist taboo on self-defense denies years of data that show how effective, empowering, and culture-changing women’s practice of verbal and physical self-defense is. (We have written about this here, here, here, and here.)
Why is teaching women to fight, resist, and master meanness metaphorically, without including self-defense, a problem? Because, as we have emphasized, knowing you can fight physically is instrumental in knowing you have the right and the skills to fight metaphorically.
Looking for an empowerment self-defense course? These links might help:
Prepare/IMPACT Personal Safety
Wishing you all an empowered and impactful holiday season and New Year,
Martha and Jill
See Jane Fight Back 
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