This book is a modern beacon where sexism is concerned, when focusing on sexual violence.

From its introduction:

In this book, I’ve cataloged one hundred formative incidents of sexist discrimination, violence, sexual harassment, assault, and attempted rape I’ve experienced from childhood to now, to paint a clear picture of the impact sexism has had on me throughout my life. All my life when I’ve tried to talk to men about sexism, my main obstacle has been trying to convince them, quite simply, that it exists.

[...]

I am sharing this dark list, these stories, because the majority of women I know have such a list, if they start to think about it. And that is entirely my point. It’s not that my life has been exceptionally plagued with sexism. It’s that it hasn’t. That is exactly why I wrote this. It’s my hope that men will read this book and come away with a greater understanding of how sexism shapes women, of the cumulative impact it has, that may otherwise remain invisible to many men.

And as upsetting as some of the stories in this book may be to read, all of these things actually happened to me. One woman. One person. And remember, I still haven’t written about every time sexism carved something out of me, permanently reshaping me. I’ve only written about one hundred of those times.

I must admit, being a white, middle-aged man, that the last sentence in that paragraph woke me up somewhat. A second after reading it, I thought, "Oh yes, most people don't actively try and think as feminists".

The real need to read this book, for me, doesn't have to do with the fact that I enjoy feminist literature; personally, I believe sexism to be one of the biggest problems that humanity is not only facing but has faced for a very long time, but the thing about this book that truly helped me, are the many and versatile ways through which Woods has been subjected to sexism from men; it viscerally and intellectually reminded me of reading Laura Bates's "Everyday Sexism", and also following the #everydaysexism hashtag on Twitter, as they exposed the far-reaching nature of men's verbal violence and discrimination of others than men in ways I had not experienced before.

So, the book starts:

When I was five years old, I was playing in the sprinklers in my swimming suit with a five-year-old boy. He kept pinching my butt to the point that I started crying. I repeatedly told him to stop, and finally retaliated by hitting him. He didn’t stop. He kept doing it, chasing me and pinching my butt harder and harder, until it actually hurt. When went inside and I told on him, his mother laughed at me and told me I probably liked it. Almost all of the adults present thought it was cute. I learned quickly that if a boy was hurting me, he would get in trouble. But, if the way he was hurting me was sexual, I would be mocked, and it would be assumed I’d secretly enjoyed this assault.

Now, thinking about that, I suppose that some men may think "It's a boy's prank!" but Woods is right; that last sentence does put the finger on the matter; a girl could probably not have gotten away with doing the same thing to a boy, and they're five years old. The old "boys being boys" idiocy just has to stop, and reading that paragraph kind of validates that the tombstone needs to be in-place soon.

In the second grade , I raised my hand in PE. I was wearing a tank top. The male gym teacher said, “Oh yeah, I can see it, baby, hubba,” in a goofy sexy voice, and leaned down and motioned to my chest. I looked down and realized he was referring to my nipple, which I noticed was poking slightly out of my tank top. I was six years old and had no breasts. I’d never felt embarrassed about my nipples showing before, or thought of my chest as sexual. I was deeply embarrassed in that moment, because of the way my adult male teacher decided to talk to me in front of all of my classmates. I don’t think this man is evil or anything. I don’t think he’s a pedophile. He just didn’t think twice about jokingly sexualizing a young girl, because this is so normalized. The impact on me, though, was to make me overly aware and ashamed of my body, especially of my chest, which I had never even previously been aware of as a possibly sexual part of my six-year-old body. He also seemed to be jokingly implying I was “showing him” my nipple on purpose.

This example is also mind-numbingly horrific, in my mind; to even joke about something like sexualising a six-year-old child is in the realm of the insane. It's not OK, it's not acceptable, and it's assault. To be male and to propagate the behaviour is simply degenerate and punishable.

Early into the book, it stunned me. I had to put it down and recognise how most men, I wager, seldom come across this pap. It's simply not in "our" world, by which I mean that a lot of men seem to think "well, it doesn't happen to me, which means it doesn't happen", which is solipsistic beyond sanity.

Reading this book is a mind cleanser; for me, it's like sobering up. This is what the incel sexists need to read and not hang out at Twitter and Reddit and become even more stupid.

The incident that is described in the following two paragraphs recently replayed, in near-entirety, where I live, in Sweden:

When I was seventeen, a boy who’d graduated from my school a year earlier, at the age of nineteen, killed himself and his two-year-old daughter, in retaliation for his ex-wife and child’s mother (who was only eighteen years old) breaking up with him and getting a new boyfriend.

His ex-wife said that he’d killed their daughter because he knew this is what would hurt her the most, and he wanted revenge for her getting with another man. This was more than speculation on her part. He’d been granted limited custody of the two-year-old girl, weekends only, though it was a temporary ruling, in place until the custody trial was finalized. In his suicide note, he stated that he loved his daughter, but could not tolerate his daughter living with his ex-wife and another man.

That event was actually explained and deemed to be completely justified in the eyes of some persons, which I believe is at the gist of what we men need to do when hearing of sexism being performed in any way: we need to point it out and denounce it immediately.

On another note, I love how Woods prints small facts about hailed persons, showing them for what they actually are:

Norman Mailer was a celebrated, National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize– winning novelist and essayist who theorized a lot about how men are oppressed by feminism. He also attempted to murder his wife by stabbing her repeatedly, which did nearly kill her, and for which he only served three years’ probation, which men who love him never like to talk about.

Sure, Mailer was a celebrated artist, but he also (much like Pablo Picasso) was a complete sexist, which must be known for all admirers of "The Arts" who try to explain away the behaviours of sexists everywhere.

Some times, while reading the book, there comes a story that somehow ends on a good note, despite of something tragic having taken place:

When I was twenty-three, I was playing racquetball with my girlfriend on a gorgeous beach on Long Island. It was a late summer day, somewhat chilly, so we were both wearing sweatshirts and jeans on the beach. At one point, when we took a break from hitting the ball, we realized there were two men, who were totally unconnected to one another, sitting on opposite sides, near us, masturbating.

It was a sure thing. They both had their dicks out, fully exposed, and were staring at us while jacking off. Two of them. One on our left. One on our right. And they didn’t know each other. I just feel like I have to say that twice. “Are you fucking kidding me?” my girlfriend shouted. I took the small ball we’d been playing racquetball with and threw it at one man’s head. He ducked and smiled, then licked his lips at me. He did not stop masturbating.

My girlfriend (and I do mean lesbian partner) walked up to the other man, who was a white, well-dressed businessman type, with a nice bag sitting next to him. She picked up his bag and walked it over to the ocean. He stood, holding his crotch, his pants at his feet, and started waddling behind her, shouting “No, no, no!” She threw his bag into the ocean, as he screamed. “Fuck you!” she told him, and then again, in Spanish. The other man, who looked more like a not-well-off-at-all troll, got up and ran away as she headed over to him.

When we lamented the story to a heterosexual couple on the beach later, the man of the couple told us we shouldn’t come to the beach “alone together.”

Two women . . . “alone” . . . “together.”

Alone. Together.

It's poetic, in the middle of all the hate. Woods does carry off the hard task of balancing her stories while maintaining good prosody; this book breathes well.

Woods also speaks of how all transgender persons that she was close to, who revealed their coming out/transitioning to living as a woman lost their job within a year of doing so; about how she asked a male friend to read her exact words from a script to make another man act; how she was chased by a bunch of boys with baseball bats who tried to kill her (according to herself and at least one witness; how cis males believe they can "turn" lesbians; how men blatantly and without any context tell her to shave her legs, etc.

This book is a triumphant achievement. If I worked in a school, I'd try my best to force it to buy a very large amount of copies and spread it everywhere. Physically grown men need this. People need to talk about this, mainly men. And let's not forget that sexism exists everywhere; women do it too.

I give this book 5/5 without even thinking about another grade. This is masterful and immensely needed by all, realising it or not. ( )

This book is laid out with a very simple format: Woods has put down on paper 100 different instances of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, ranging from discrimination, to verbal abuse to groping to out and out assault. These instances are laid out chronologically, from age 5 to her mid-30s. These have happened everywhere; in school (by a teacher), in places of employment, in bars, and even in her own apartment – by her male roommate who refused to wear pants. And they are not by any means *all* the problems she has had with sexist men. She writes plainly and simply, just laying out what happened with no melodrama attached.

Most women reading this will be horrified, but will also recognize their own lives. Most of us have endured these kinds of discrimination, harassment and assault. I cringed, because I certainly have, from the mildest to the worst. And despite the fact that these things happen to almost all of us, a huge segment of men- even men who are feminists- do not believe that sexual harassment happens. It is so ingrained in our society that it’s become invisible. We mostly shrug it off.

I wish this book were given to each and every middle school student in some kind of health or even civics class. These problems need to become visible, before the kids get out there navigating adult life. Five stars, and kudos to the author. ( )