My first non-fiction book review for 2024 is Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit (non-fiction, 154 pages), which was a gift to me from one of my bookbinding friends.

I normally don’t read books without dragons, aliens, or magic because I’m often of the opinion that the real world isn’t a very great place and I shouldn’t have to spend my free time there, but this was a gift from a good friend and I am trying to do better about reading things I normally wouldn’t.

“In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf ’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women.”

There’s clearly a lot of research that went into this book and it was published a decade ago, which is both very interesting and very depressing. Why depressing? Because in a lot of ways, we haven’t made the kind of progress the book hopes for. I was particularly thrown when I read on page 110 about the issues with a Senate Judiciary Committee on 11 October 1991 for the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. I actually read this paragraph and then set the book down and stared off into space for a few minutes. See, I was too young to remember any of this when it actually happened, but I have vague memories of knowing the name “Anita Hill.” As it turns out, Anita Hill testified about how her boss, Clarence Thomas, made Anita Hill’s work place incredibly uncomfortable for her (I’m saying it nicely and not quoting the book because if you’re reading this book review, it means you have internet and have the ability to do a search for information on your own). This particular paragraph had such a heavy impact on me because that individual is STILL on the United States Supreme Court right now and there’s a whole bunch of ethical issues with him from my perspective and the fact that the U.S. Senate KNEW he had issues back in *1991* and STILL appointed him to his position?

Well. It’s overwhelming and depressing. And I firmly believe there’s a TON of issues with the current U.S. Supreme Court and that’s even more depressing. Rebecca Solnit in this book mentions Roe vs. Wade and the impact it had on allowing women to have control over their own bodies and lives but now Roe vs. Wade has disintegrated and we’re now living in a country where a criminal gets to run for President and States are going out of their way to make women’s health care and autonomy near impossible. The population as a whole feels like it’s getting more disenfranchised with voting in general and more hopeless as more rights keep getting taken away from minority populations.

[A random note in the middle of my book review: This is your Sign. Please. For the love of actual freedom, liberty, self-determination, and everything you hold dear, VOTE. Participate in the democratic process. Make sure you are registered to vote and vote in ALL local and primary elections. In fact, it’s never too early to make sure you’re registered. Here’s a link to some resources to help you register to vote].

Then, I was thrown back into our modern world of “how did we let things get WORSE” when on page 114, she talks about a certain party’s love affair with calling all elections that don’t work out the way they want “voter fraud.” And I just … stopped again.

While I read this book slowly (for me) and it took me probably a month to read a page or two at a time while eating my meals downstairs, it really started having a lot more context for the world we know right now at the beginning of 2024 closer to the end of the book.

By this time in the book, we’ve already been presented with a history of where we came from to get where we are. We’ve read about internationally acknowledged rape cases, societal and cultural norms getting power from keeping women’s voices out of existence, marriage, Virginia Woolf, feminism, and all the men who are threatened by women being something other than their property.

I feel a little bit like this book is like the movie Idiocracy, which started as a comedy and turned into a terrifying documentary.

Around page 141 when the book talks about Pandora’s Box (which really was actually a jar), the part that really got me here was talking about hope. I think Rebecca Solnit is absolutely correct in talking about how the jar was opened, but Pandora closed it in time to keep hope in. And, really, that’s what we need to focus on. For all that things in the broad spectrum of global events feel extra bleak right now, there are a lot of good things happening. And because we all need that reminder, here‘s a “click bait” link to a website filled with good news. But that’s also kind of the point in this part of the book – women refuse to be silenced again. Near the very, very end of the book on page 149, she talks about this being a war and there might be set backs but that we won’t quit.

And I think that’s something we all need to remember. Keep fighting, no matter how exhausted we all are. We can’t let things get worse, especially not because of easy complacency.

Overall, this is a book I never would have read if it hadn’t been gifted to me as it was, but I am actually glad I read it. I might reference it in the future but I don’t know that I would reread the whole thing, so that makes it probably a 2.5 on my rating scheme.

Solnit, Rebecca. Men Explain Things To Me. Haymarket Books, 2014.