Jennifer Baumgardner

From my Cannonball Read V review ...

As I close in on the full Cannonball, I'm trying to wrap up a lot of books that I've put down over the course of the year. There's a science book, one of the Song of Ice and Fire series, another etiquette book, and one on goddesses (seriously). And then there’s this one, which I started way back in January. Why the ten month break between starting and finishing it? Well … I just did not like it.

Manifesta is on a lot of 'must read' feminism book lists, show more but I found it to be mediocre. The writing isn't bad - it's not like Cinderella's Lost Diary or whatever that unfortunate book was that Cannonballers were offered for free earlier this year. My problem is that it’s not actually what it claims to be - a feminism manifesto. It's more like a thrown-together anthology of white feminism, with some 'picture this' writing thrown in. The chapters feel disjointed, and I'm not entirely clear what the authors sought to do with this book. Were they trying to say what the 'third wave' feminists are contributing to feminism as a whole? Were they trying to explore what previous feminists did (and how that was and was not successful)? Trying to outline what we should be doing going forward? I think a book could be successful in doing all three, but that’s not this book.

In addition to the book feeling disjointed and unfocused, there were so many areas where they missed opportunities to really explore feminism - warts and all. There was even one point where I wanted to just throw the book out the window, but was nearly 200 pages in so I just stuck it out. That moment was during a discussion of toys for young girls, and the issues with Barbie, and the attempts to push Mattel to sell Barbies that look more like all girls – so not just blond, white Barbies. The authors passed that off as “PC,” and they meant that as an insult. Any book that uses the concept of "Politically Correct" as though it is derogatory just isn't a good book in my opinion. Saying something is 'politically correct' means that it's showing some empathy to people, and recognizing that straight, white, cis people aren't all who matter.

That very specific issue is one example of the larger problem with this book - it's so, very, very white. Yes, the authors mention contributions from women of color (usually in passing), but they don't acknowledge any of the larger issues with mainstream white feminism. They buy into the "women fought to join the workforce and stay there after the war" story, for example, but don't acknowledge that many women of color had already been working for decades. They don't recognize the complexity of race, gender and sexuality - it's a lot of Gloria Steinem and one reference to bell hooks.

Going forward, I'll be avoiding these generic overviews of feminism, whether targeting and young women or not. I'm more interested in learning about the full history of feminism, and womanism, and reading books that look at the bigger issues of intersectionality that mainstream feminism keeps ignoring. show less

When I read about this book in the Utne Reader, I couldn't wait to buy it. A modern, young, memoir-style account of bisexuality and politics is not one of the most common book styles around- yet just what I had been yearning for. Baumgardner's book fills a void for this type of irreverent, fresh take on post-feminist bisexuality within the context of second-wave political lesbianism. It was disappointing, however, to finish the book feeling like I had read a memoir in which the data (second show more wave feminism) was made to fit the theory (bisexuality) rather than the other way around. I felt more like I was reading about why straight women sometimes like women, rather than about people who truly have no criteria for sex when it comes to their lovers or partners. I recommend it, just don't set your hopes too high. show less

If this book had been subtitled Feminist Politics, I think I might have been more satisfied with it. Like others, I expected more about bisexuality and it's meanings as pertains to the auther's life/history, and instead I got a rehash of feminism and it's effects on sexual behavior in the author's milieu. As someone fundamentally disinterested in feminist politics, this became a problem. It's not that the book was bad, on the contrary, it was certainly well written, and the personal show more histories of the many women quoted were interesting, as far as they went, but the book didn't turn out to be about bisexuality as much as the title had lead me to believe. show less

This book is written by Jennifer Baumgardner, who started the "I had an abortion" project in 2004. This book is part of that project. It starts with a brief history of abortion, a discussion of the project, an introduction to the "pro-voice" movement, and thoughts on feminism and the pro-life movement.

The most valuable aspect of the first part was the discussion of the pro-voice movement. Pro-voice is the idea that it should be okay to talk about abortion as a bad thing, as something that show more we should work to decrease the frequency of, without being painted as being against abortion. It should be okay for a woman to have conflicting emotions about her own abortion without being shamed for it. It should be okay to say, "I believe that the fetus is a person, but I still believe in the right to choose". In fact, not only should all of these thoughts be okay to have, discussing them out in the open is the only way to get beyond the caustic dichotomy that defines the abortion debate today. Sadly, since this discussion covered only a chapter, Baumgardner did not go into much depth.

The rest of the book is portraits and stories of women who got abortions. While not as deep as the stories in [b:Choice True Stories of Birth Contraception Infertility Adoption Single Parenthood and Abortion|1351728|Choice True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion|Karen E. Bender|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336956623s/1351728.jpg|1341413] -- that would be difficult when these stories are only a few pages each -- hearing the real stories of women who chose abortion is always an important reminder of how diverse and complicated these decisions are. show less