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(Un)kind: How Kindness Culture Punishes Women
Using the #JustBeKind trend of the 2020s as a starting point, (Un)kind explores how traditional beliefs about women's 'kind' nature have been repackaged for an age that remains dependent - socially, politically, economically - on female self-sacrifice while finding the concept outdated and essentialist.
Looking at the various guises under which kindness culture is sold to women and girls - from play to self-help, social justice activism to empowerment - it argues that the pressure on women and girls has not decreased, but instead been incorporated into the 'work' of feminism. (Un)kind also proposes that this phenomenon ultimately distorts relations between humans, harming not just those coerced into performing 'kindness work' but the supposed recipients of their services. Kindness culture supports the backlash against feminism while claiming to represent feminism's - and women's - true nature. It is, at heart, unkind.
Looking at the various guises under which kindness culture is sold to women and girls - from play to self-help, social justice activism to empowerment - it argues that the pressure on women and girls has not decreased, but instead been incorporated into the 'work' of feminism. (Un)kind also proposes that this phenomenon ultimately distorts relations between humans, harming not just those coerced into performing 'kindness work' but the supposed recipients of their services. Kindness culture supports the backlash against feminism while claiming to represent feminism's - and women's - true nature. It is, at heart, unkind.
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
February 22, 2025
Read this book.
Or be like me and listen to it, then decide it’s good enough that you need a hard copy to flag passages.
Especially if:
- you’re a female athlete who wants her own sports category (and hates being called “unkind” for saying so)
- you’re a mother who doesn’t want to be referred to as a pregnant person
- you’re a woman and know it isn’t a choice
- you’ve been kind to a man to avoid violence
- you care about women
- you like witty and sharp writing
Or be like me and listen to it, then decide it’s good enough that you need a hard copy to flag passages.
Especially if:
- you’re a female athlete who wants her own sports category (and hates being called “unkind” for saying so)
- you’re a mother who doesn’t want to be referred to as a pregnant person
- you’re a woman and know it isn’t a choice
- you’ve been kind to a man to avoid violence
- you care about women
- you like witty and sharp writing
February 15, 2025
Every woman needs to read Victoria Smith
Without a doubt, one of our best current feminist writers. Insightful, considered and nail-on-head eloquent, I couldn’t stop reading. Every woman should read this, and Victoria’s earlier book, Hags.
Without a doubt, one of our best current feminist writers. Insightful, considered and nail-on-head eloquent, I couldn’t stop reading. Every woman should read this, and Victoria’s earlier book, Hags.
February 17, 2025
Absolutely great book about how be kind is now used as a weapon to stop women standing up for themselves and as a way to remove previously hard one rights.
October 29, 2025
DNF. I tried so hard to get into this book. But after two hours of the author’s attempts to justify their transphobia as a feminist angle I gave up. I can read books that have a different opinion to myself. I do it regularly. But this was tedious. It felt like it was the whole purpose of the book. Not the purported discussion of how women are conditioned to be kind. Instead of trying to empower women to act in whatever way they choose to the author used it as a platform to preach their hatred of inclusion.
June 20, 2026
Did not finish. Made me very uncomfortable. Transphobic. There were some elements of what I had read, that contained good arguements, and it is true that we should not stand down on our beliefs and not be heard, to appease people. However, this should not happen at the sake of others. A true feminist fights for equality for all. I was really looking forward to reading this book, but extremely disappointed. There is no place for transphobia.
December 18, 2025
Great premise if the author could have stuck to the subject matter at hand however I actually believe the title of the book was a Trojan horse to then talk endlessly about her disdain for trans people, seconded only to feminists who aren't trans exclusive.
April 14, 2025
some good concepts but couldnt get past the author's binary biological female views of the 'woman' and their seeming dismissal of any woman that diverts from this
March 2, 2025
This isn’t as good as "Hags". "Hags" was brilliant. This is occasionally brilliant. It also starts off fairly weak; the introduction and "just be pure" almost discouraged me from reading any further. But it does get better in the latter sections.
There’s a faint, ironic sense of fear of sounding too unkind, too direct and (of course) far-right, especially at the beginning. Connoisseurs may want to know that Jane Clare Jones and Julie Bindel are quoted a lot, on fairly unoriginal observations. And when the notorious KJK is mentioned, the author has to mention that she has little common ground with her.
Also, for an author who agrees that "woman" is short for "adult human female", the text is sure full of "female people", "female persons" and the occasional "people with uteruses". Similarly, "sex work" isn’t a neutral term in feminist discourse, and yet it is used as such throughout the book. Those linguistic choices are never explained and feel like a last-minute choice.
Who am I kidding, of course I’m gonna read her next book. Unless it’s "Jane Clare Jones: Life and Work".
There’s a faint, ironic sense of fear of sounding too unkind, too direct and (of course) far-right, especially at the beginning. Connoisseurs may want to know that Jane Clare Jones and Julie Bindel are quoted a lot, on fairly unoriginal observations. And when the notorious KJK is mentioned, the author has to mention that she has little common ground with her.
Also, for an author who agrees that "woman" is short for "adult human female", the text is sure full of "female people", "female persons" and the occasional "people with uteruses". Similarly, "sex work" isn’t a neutral term in feminist discourse, and yet it is used as such throughout the book. Those linguistic choices are never explained and feel like a last-minute choice.
Who am I kidding, of course I’m gonna read her next book. Unless it’s "Jane Clare Jones: Life and Work".
May 31, 2025
4.5 stars, rounded up.
I was on the fence initially - the preface was sloppy, too redundant. Logically pretty sound but could have been leaned out with a good edit. Ch1 was better, but a little obvious - I was wondering if there was any point in continuing halfway through Ch2 & if she was going to make any unique points or offer insights I hadn’t heard before. Is she just going to be snarky & embittered like a senile uncle at Thanksgiving? I wondered if I was a bad person for listening to it, actually. I thought, “Am I just masturbatorily listening here in an echo chamber to have my own views reinforced? Is it useful? Why am I reading instead of doomscrolling a subreddit or in a Youtube algorithmic death spiral right now? Is this a good use of time?”
Considering abandoning it, but then Chapter 3 was gloves off. She made EXCELLENT points with great literary references throughout Chapter 3 and finally we were off to the races with new thoughts on the subject of gender vs sex and why exactly the distinction matters that may not just be readily apparent to anyone with common sense & experience growing up in a female body.
I really appreciated her fairness and pragmatism in Chapter 3, and so far, I’ll say if you’ve been in on the dialogue or are open to considering the conversation, you could possibly just skip right to Chapter 3. There was a very thought provoking concept of patriarchal scripts of defining womanhood as a behavior rather than an often rather random but consequential biological fact, and the rebranding of it as a series of behaviors is a pretty clever trick to entrench the old norms, annex the territory of womanhood & leave biological femaleness without a platform or easily accessible category deemed socially/politically relevant of its own accord. What does it mean to “feel female” and if one doesn’t “feel female” should she then surrender her physical identity as a woman while simultaneously having been raised with all the trappings unique to someone born biologically female, and face expenses and potential ongoing health consequences of exile from her own natural biological territory because outside colonizers defined her out of it without her consent or participation? Seems nuts. What a thing to ask. But to refuse to cede ground to this is deemed bigoted because of a clash of ideas as to what being female is, and ironically, the biologically male definition of femaleness seems to be winning in “progressive” public discourse. It’s crazy.
It doesn’t matter what people choose for themselves, but for biological males to annex the space of biological females by redefining femaleness itself is just kind of unbelievable, and to have this coming from the left wing at the same time that the right wing is actively obliterating access to reproductive rights is next level regression into the Bad Old Days. It doesn’t take from anyone else to say they can’t tell their own story how they like, but if someone starts plagiarizing another’s much older story and pretending they wrote it themselves, and society applauds it, that’s injustice. It’s one thing to build an homage to the aesthetics or themes of the first story & credit the original author’s work - hell, you might write a better story, the world might prefer the newer story, just don’t erase the original story or pretend like it was entirely yours, tell the original author to stfu when she complains she’s being marginalized, and society claps because the new author is now the new hero of all the stories, and the silenced authors who politely surrender their authorship of their own experiences, surrender society’s acknowledgment of the relevance of their stories, to someone who has entirely coopted them without having lived the same lives but just read them and felt “all vibey with it”…those ones can remain in the king’s court, uncomplainingly paying tribute. 🤷♀️
If we abolished gender identity altogether, maybe that would fix it, and we just have biological distinctions deemed tedious little messy meatsack accidents we try to minimize at very least and make the most of at best - changing them if we wish, to have a body we like better, aesthetically, functionally - whatever! This idea of male & female brain as an excuse to channel people into social roles has got to go. The way forward is obviously greater acceptance for everyone in every body, with distinctions for purely practical, material reasons. Are humans capable of this? This is admittedly tricky af. But so is the current experiment, and the reaction of the Right Wing could scarcely be more pronounced than in the current climate. Bigotry exists, but the whole “hiding behind you in the game of hide and seek from the patriarchy” thing isn’t a great tactic if both of you are losing out in the process. Don’t know if anyone noticed, but feminism hasn’t been winning the fight lately, and now it’s picked up whole other side agendas for AMAB folks who sometimes prefer to exist in what today’s science can provide as an approximation of a female body (hell yeah, live the dream), and/or what is regressively conflated with “femininity of spirit” - which I’m not sure is actually a thing that exists, or that needs to be defined as tied to womanhood as a category. It’s the yin side of the coin, but not all women are yin - and many who act yin were just socially conditioned to behave in a yin manner by both carrot & stick. It’s a lot of baggage to put on a woman & has been used to shame & hold us back historically for most of written history. So AMABs telling us that they know what it’s like to be us because they identify with a cluster of traits we don’t relate to but that male people have been projecting onto us for most of recorded history feels a touch…anachronistic. And that’s not because we dislike people with dysphoria. If anything, dysphoria is relatable, sympathetic. There are ways of dealing with this aside from a forceful powergrab over existing definitions between 2 marginalized communities.
You may disagree with Smith’s arguments but it took courage & and a sharp grasp of reason and context to make them this well, and if you do go into reading this expecting disagreement, it would take some courage for you to read it with an open mind as well. I think she does the topic justice, overall, while being fair and considerate to all involved.
I was on the fence initially - the preface was sloppy, too redundant. Logically pretty sound but could have been leaned out with a good edit. Ch1 was better, but a little obvious - I was wondering if there was any point in continuing halfway through Ch2 & if she was going to make any unique points or offer insights I hadn’t heard before. Is she just going to be snarky & embittered like a senile uncle at Thanksgiving? I wondered if I was a bad person for listening to it, actually. I thought, “Am I just masturbatorily listening here in an echo chamber to have my own views reinforced? Is it useful? Why am I reading instead of doomscrolling a subreddit or in a Youtube algorithmic death spiral right now? Is this a good use of time?”
Considering abandoning it, but then Chapter 3 was gloves off. She made EXCELLENT points with great literary references throughout Chapter 3 and finally we were off to the races with new thoughts on the subject of gender vs sex and why exactly the distinction matters that may not just be readily apparent to anyone with common sense & experience growing up in a female body.
I really appreciated her fairness and pragmatism in Chapter 3, and so far, I’ll say if you’ve been in on the dialogue or are open to considering the conversation, you could possibly just skip right to Chapter 3. There was a very thought provoking concept of patriarchal scripts of defining womanhood as a behavior rather than an often rather random but consequential biological fact, and the rebranding of it as a series of behaviors is a pretty clever trick to entrench the old norms, annex the territory of womanhood & leave biological femaleness without a platform or easily accessible category deemed socially/politically relevant of its own accord. What does it mean to “feel female” and if one doesn’t “feel female” should she then surrender her physical identity as a woman while simultaneously having been raised with all the trappings unique to someone born biologically female, and face expenses and potential ongoing health consequences of exile from her own natural biological territory because outside colonizers defined her out of it without her consent or participation? Seems nuts. What a thing to ask. But to refuse to cede ground to this is deemed bigoted because of a clash of ideas as to what being female is, and ironically, the biologically male definition of femaleness seems to be winning in “progressive” public discourse. It’s crazy.
It doesn’t matter what people choose for themselves, but for biological males to annex the space of biological females by redefining femaleness itself is just kind of unbelievable, and to have this coming from the left wing at the same time that the right wing is actively obliterating access to reproductive rights is next level regression into the Bad Old Days. It doesn’t take from anyone else to say they can’t tell their own story how they like, but if someone starts plagiarizing another’s much older story and pretending they wrote it themselves, and society applauds it, that’s injustice. It’s one thing to build an homage to the aesthetics or themes of the first story & credit the original author’s work - hell, you might write a better story, the world might prefer the newer story, just don’t erase the original story or pretend like it was entirely yours, tell the original author to stfu when she complains she’s being marginalized, and society claps because the new author is now the new hero of all the stories, and the silenced authors who politely surrender their authorship of their own experiences, surrender society’s acknowledgment of the relevance of their stories, to someone who has entirely coopted them without having lived the same lives but just read them and felt “all vibey with it”…those ones can remain in the king’s court, uncomplainingly paying tribute. 🤷♀️
If we abolished gender identity altogether, maybe that would fix it, and we just have biological distinctions deemed tedious little messy meatsack accidents we try to minimize at very least and make the most of at best - changing them if we wish, to have a body we like better, aesthetically, functionally - whatever! This idea of male & female brain as an excuse to channel people into social roles has got to go. The way forward is obviously greater acceptance for everyone in every body, with distinctions for purely practical, material reasons. Are humans capable of this? This is admittedly tricky af. But so is the current experiment, and the reaction of the Right Wing could scarcely be more pronounced than in the current climate. Bigotry exists, but the whole “hiding behind you in the game of hide and seek from the patriarchy” thing isn’t a great tactic if both of you are losing out in the process. Don’t know if anyone noticed, but feminism hasn’t been winning the fight lately, and now it’s picked up whole other side agendas for AMAB folks who sometimes prefer to exist in what today’s science can provide as an approximation of a female body (hell yeah, live the dream), and/or what is regressively conflated with “femininity of spirit” - which I’m not sure is actually a thing that exists, or that needs to be defined as tied to womanhood as a category. It’s the yin side of the coin, but not all women are yin - and many who act yin were just socially conditioned to behave in a yin manner by both carrot & stick. It’s a lot of baggage to put on a woman & has been used to shame & hold us back historically for most of written history. So AMABs telling us that they know what it’s like to be us because they identify with a cluster of traits we don’t relate to but that male people have been projecting onto us for most of recorded history feels a touch…anachronistic. And that’s not because we dislike people with dysphoria. If anything, dysphoria is relatable, sympathetic. There are ways of dealing with this aside from a forceful powergrab over existing definitions between 2 marginalized communities.
You may disagree with Smith’s arguments but it took courage & and a sharp grasp of reason and context to make them this well, and if you do go into reading this expecting disagreement, it would take some courage for you to read it with an open mind as well. I think she does the topic justice, overall, while being fair and considerate to all involved.
March 23, 2025
I've given this four stars but the truth is, I struggled with quite a lot of it. There are some interesting parts in this but some of it I found hard to grasp and I'm not sure whether that is due to the writing or my lack of understanding of some of the theory. However the motto, Just Be Kind, can most definitely be a way of undermining women's power and I do think this is an important, if flawed book.
July 6, 2025
"Be Kind" has many problems. So does this book. Managing to sit between both most feminist positions and most anti-feminist positions, there are lots of good points, cut with rhetoric which pushes absurdist approaches to logic to make unpleasant conclusions seem rational. A disorienting read overall, entrenched in some hostility regarding trans people and some elements of recovery from rape culture which are difficult to process.
June 25, 2025
Although I didn't agree with some of sentiments, I enjoyed how perspectives were put forward.
July 30, 2025
An excellent book which I read via Audible, read by the author. Through her book she carefully analyses the impact of the 'Be Kind' movement and demonstrates again and again how this is deeply embedded misogyny with the expectation that women will 'be kind' in all and every circumstance. There is a place for kindness, of course, but it should not be based on gendered expectations, especially those situations in which women's rights are under threat and females are expected to renegotiate their boundaries to accommodate males. 'Be Kind' is just another weapon in patriarchy's arsenal...and it is very insidious and effective. We should be alert!
December 7, 2025
This book was both an interesting and difficult read.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been so torn about what to rate a book before. There were parts of this book that were really incredible and also parts of this book that I completely disagreed with and was genuinely counting down the pages to finish it. I’m probably going to change this review multiple times because I’m still confused on what to think.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been so torn about what to rate a book before. There were parts of this book that were really incredible and also parts of this book that I completely disagreed with and was genuinely counting down the pages to finish it. I’m probably going to change this review multiple times because I’m still confused on what to think.
September 26, 2025
Like her previous books, it's like she looked into my head, pulled out a bunch of random thoughts, observations and concerns and articulated them all in the sharpest prose and via a feminist framework. Those who have always have an instinctive ick feeling about the be kind messaging aimed at women and girls will find this an incredibly useful read.
September 12, 2025
A very profound book pushing back the idea that womanhood is grounded in "supposedly feminine behaviour" instead of our shared body characteristics. Helps a lot to read a feminist and gender-critical stance on the subject after being ridiculed by some supposedly feminist people for my views.
July 17, 2026
This was a tricky read. If you're going into this book thinking you'll agree with everything Smith says, you'll be sorely disappointed. Why only engage with feminist arguments you agree with anyway? It's important to step out of your echo chamber. Equally, if you come away with the only broad stroke conclusion that she's an angry TERF, then I'm afraid you've not critically engaged with the text.
Smith's arguments are far more nuanced than just bashing trans women, which a lot of other reviews seems to assert, though I didn't wholly agree with a lot of her conclusions either. She made some interesting points that gave me cause for reflection, and ultimately I've come away with a deeper understanding of the sexism rooted in kindness culture, and exactly why asserting and respecting female sex as a political class is still important to the success of modern feminism.
I learned a lot about the damage of private surrogacy, why pro-porn arguments wrapped up as sexual liberation aren't quite as liberating as we think, about the growing culture of men on the left pontificating to women about feminist ideals, and the cotton ceiling.
Go into this book curious, critical, armed with sticky tabs and a pen or pencil. Be prepared to read and re-read passages. This isn't a passive reading experience.
Smith's arguments are far more nuanced than just bashing trans women, which a lot of other reviews seems to assert, though I didn't wholly agree with a lot of her conclusions either. She made some interesting points that gave me cause for reflection, and ultimately I've come away with a deeper understanding of the sexism rooted in kindness culture, and exactly why asserting and respecting female sex as a political class is still important to the success of modern feminism.
I learned a lot about the damage of private surrogacy, why pro-porn arguments wrapped up as sexual liberation aren't quite as liberating as we think, about the growing culture of men on the left pontificating to women about feminist ideals, and the cotton ceiling.
Go into this book curious, critical, armed with sticky tabs and a pen or pencil. Be prepared to read and re-read passages. This isn't a passive reading experience.
April 10, 2025
This is a solid book, getting to grips with the notion of "being kind", a reasonable-enough sounding request which, when used in contemporary discourse, tends to mean "do as you're told". She chooses some good examples of it being deployed as a way of telling women to shut the fuck up while still maintaining one's good progressive credentials.
The backbone of the argument is good: she takes a realistic view of women's place in society stands up for her right to stand up for her rights.
It has its flaws of course, mainly in what I guess I can call it's analytical framework, but maybe I'm just skeptical of analytical frameworks in general. But that stuff is all presentation. She's at her strongest when she's laying waste to the shitty and self-serving attitudes that are adopted towards women who have the wrong sort of feminism, and I am, as the young folk say, here for it.
The backbone of the argument is good: she takes a realistic view of women's place in society stands up for her right to stand up for her rights.
It has its flaws of course, mainly in what I guess I can call it's analytical framework, but maybe I'm just skeptical of analytical frameworks in general. But that stuff is all presentation. She's at her strongest when she's laying waste to the shitty and self-serving attitudes that are adopted towards women who have the wrong sort of feminism, and I am, as the young folk say, here for it.
June 2, 2026
This book has me so torn up, it has such an important message here and when read with discernment it can really help to challenge issues within the left. However, its constant talk of biology is deeply upsetting, I haven't read all the way through but whenever the author brings up biology it seems targeted at trans women. The discussion didn't appear to include intersex individuals, nonbinary individuals, or trans men.
In a sense, theres logic to focusing on women through an overlapping lens of identity and biology, but each one of us have different experiences of gender and our body. Just because I am a woman does that mean my experiences are the same as the author's? Just because I have a uterus does this mean our experiences will be the same? What does it mean to be a woman? There was a time where race excluded woman from the title of womanhood. If a woman doesn't have the same organs as me but they have the same experiences of oppression, do we not share in the same struggle? At what points are the lines of intersectionality drawn? When am I not allowed to see my suffering as an extension of womanhood?
I don't feel like this is a matter of kindness, or that the author is a woman - but its a matter of the messages written. There are so many important points raised but I feel like it wasn't explored fully. I think this book is a good first step, but I hope, if you read this book, your journey with feminism goes beyond this. Maybe my issue is this book was never meant for me, but I guess it was a reasonable misunderstanding from the subtitle.
In a sense, theres logic to focusing on women through an overlapping lens of identity and biology, but each one of us have different experiences of gender and our body. Just because I am a woman does that mean my experiences are the same as the author's? Just because I have a uterus does this mean our experiences will be the same? What does it mean to be a woman? There was a time where race excluded woman from the title of womanhood. If a woman doesn't have the same organs as me but they have the same experiences of oppression, do we not share in the same struggle? At what points are the lines of intersectionality drawn? When am I not allowed to see my suffering as an extension of womanhood?
I don't feel like this is a matter of kindness, or that the author is a woman - but its a matter of the messages written. There are so many important points raised but I feel like it wasn't explored fully. I think this book is a good first step, but I hope, if you read this book, your journey with feminism goes beyond this. Maybe my issue is this book was never meant for me, but I guess it was a reasonable misunderstanding from the subtitle.
May 23, 2025
Holy smokes the writing in this books is sometimes so convoluted... but once one gets past that, there are some really intriguing arguments and conundrums to consider. Definitely worth the perseverance - and the discomfort of mulling over opinions and arguments that might go against ones' sensibilities and usual reassurances.
April 21, 2026
fantastic & thought provoking - touches on issues such as the need to recognise biological sex, commercial surrogacy, prostituition, the exploitation of women, the treatment of rape victims, etc. quite depressing ngl.
March 29, 2025
Content walking: terfery. If you can look past that, some good points and righteous feminist rage. Neatly puts a finger on my feelings that "world kindness day" just puts more about on women.
March 15, 2026
can’t wait to flame this in the fall edition of the CJWL
June 4, 2026
horrible, didnt talk abt anything i wanted it to, was too busy being so transphobic I could barely finish….. feeling gross after forcing myself to finish
February 23, 2026
Not as good as Hags. Some of the sentences are convoluted in a way that obscures meaning- but not in an intentionally-deceptive, Judith Butler-y way, in a “this was written too quickly and needs a stronger edit” way.
March 16, 2026
Sexist trite
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews