Fleischmarkt: Weibliche Körper im Kapitalismus

by Laurie Penny

Unsere Kultur ist besessen von der Kontrolle über den weiblichen Körper, sie quillt über von Darstellungen unwirklicher weiblicher Schönheit. Gleichzeitig weidet sich die Presse an magersüchtigen Stars und schwangeren Unterschichts-Teenagern. Der Spätkapitalismus brandmarkt den Körper von Frauen im Wortsinne - er brennt sein Markenzeichen ein. Fleischmarkt versucht, einige der Strategien aufzuzeigen, mit denen Frauenkörper entmachtet und kontrolliert werden. In Kapiteln zu Sexualität, Prostitution, Essstörungen, Konsum und Hausarbeit etwa werden Faktoren dargestellt, die für den Handel mit dem weiblichen Fleisch als sexuelles und soziales Kapital von Bedeutung sind. Laurie Penny kennt die Theorien ihrer Vorkämpferinnen, aber sie berichtet von der Front der heutigen Verwerfungslinien und Grabenkämpfe. Fleischmarkt ist ein Stück feministischer Dialektik, das den Körper der Frau als sexuellen Stützpunkt des kapitalistischen Kannibalismus offenlegt.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Womens, Essays, Gender Studies

Audible Audio

First published March 13, 2012

About the author

Laurie Penny is a journalist, an author, a feminist and a net denizen. She is Contributing Editor at New Statesman magazine, and writes and speaks on social justice, pop culture, gender issues and digital politics for The Guardian, The Independent, Vice, Salon, The Nation, The New Inquiry and many more. She is the author of Cybersexism, Penny Red and Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism, as well as Discordia: Six Nights in Crisis Athens, co-authored with Molly Crabapple. Her book, Unspeakable Things, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014. In 2010, at the age of 23, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing. She is a frequent guest on national television and radio, has appeared on Question Time, Any Questions and Newsnight for the BBC, as well as Al-Jazeera and Democracy Now, and has given talks at the Oxford Union and the London School of Economics.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sharp, tightly written and polemical book on feminism and modern capitalism’s effect on female bodies, which approaches the issues raised with feminist thought from a perspective which reflects writers like Shulamith Firestone. Penny is concerned with capitalist patriarchy and addresses debates within feminism.
A personal note is needed here. I was brought up within a fundamentalist Christion context with very traditional ideas about gender roles. Men went out to work, women looked after the house and children. One significant theological aspect of my background had a lasting effect and that was the doctrine of original sin. Whilst this doctrine is rather negative and guilt inducing, there is an interesting aspect. With original sin everyone is absolutely equal in terms of sin. There is no gradation for race, gender, colour, class or creed. We are all the same. Once I lost the religious aspect and decided I was not religious, I still had the sense that all people were equal. I started addressing these ideas seriously when I was at university. I didn’t start by reading The Second Sex or The Female Eunuch. My way in was Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. Age and life experience have had their effect, but I still fundamentally accept the ideas Penny articulates in this text.
There are chapters on eating disorders, transgender, sexuality (including pornography and sex workers), and work within capitalism (including domestic work). Penny does not shy away from debates and disagreements within feminism and her stance is firmly within the left of politics seeing patriarchy and capitalism as being firmly intertwined. This is brief so there are inevitably areas not covered, but that is not the point, the arguments are set out clearly and are a good starting point for more detailed reading. The analysis is impressive and the synthesis of Marxist and feminist analysis is convincing. The Red Pepper review emphasizes the importance of the arguments about body image and the sections about body image and eating disorders are very strong. This isn’t just a theoretical wander around the subject, it is a call to action as well. This is well worth reading and is guaranteed to make you think.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Feminism is construed as a threat to femininity when it is, in fact, a threat to gender as labor capital. Women of all ages who fear identifying with feminism cite the popular stereotype of feminists as hairy-legged, loose-breasted, man-hating or man-repelling lesbians... The stereotype has persisted for a reason: because it terrorizes women with the fear that radical politics will destroy their sexuality and gender identity." (pg 36)

Laurie Penny is a force of nature. She writes for the Guardian and the New Statesman and her articles are as academic as they are passionate. Meat Market is really a collection of four powerful essays addressing sexuality, fat, gender, and housework. This is not some call-to-arms rant-fest, this is post-graduate dissertational stuff. So don't just read this. Listen up. Pay attention. Take notes.*

"Feminism holds that prescribed gender roles are a tyranny that no-one - whether trans, cis, male, female or intersex - should be forced to conform to in order to prove their identity, their validity or their human worth." (pg 45)

*Personal Note: One of the reasons I read is to see the world from other points of view. Feminism is a subject on which my experience is limited and my previous notions were admittedly ill-informed. So, like philosophy and astrophysics and numerous other topics of personal deficiency, I challenged myself to become better educated. To date, my home library consists of over 200 books that deal directly or indirectly with feminism. I am a work in progress.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I like about Laurie Penny is that she gets to the point rather quickly, and she is clearly very passionate in her feminist views. This book is a short analysis of the role women's bodies play in capitalism. It contains four essays, and the one that I found most interesting was the one about eating disorders. Penny gives a very personal account of her own battle with anorexia and discusses how media and societies expectations are to blame for more women suffering with eating disorders. Some years ago, I too, battled with an eating disorder, my weight became dangerously low, and it was an effort to even get out of bed or even walk. Mine developed out of concern that I was too big, or that I couldn't fit into a size six. Again, media and advertising and dangerously skinny models are to blame for a rise in eating disorders. To be honest, when I got to my desired weight and size, I wasn't happy, I was downright miserable. Being thin doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be in better health.
I liked the fact that there was a section on transgender women, and how their vital importance in the feminist movement is quite often overlooked.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I love Penny's way of thinking. I would love for some of the subject matters contained in this book to have been in more detail and to have been more "meaty" so to speak, but otherwise, a fascinating read.

[Emma Sea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really a primer on feminist theory, but an exceptionally good one, with the empasis on the labor and capital involved in the successful performance of normative femininity. Also an excellent chapter on transrights.

This is now the book I'll be recommmending for students who request a place to start reading about feminism: short but packs a punch.

[Lisa Langstrumpf · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Wenn alle Frauen dieser Erde morgen früh aufwachten und sich in ihren Körpern wirklich wohl und kraftvoll fühlten, würde die Weltwirtschaft über Nacht zusammenbrechen."

In Fleischmarkt analysiert Penny in vier kurzen Essays den weiblichen Körper im Kapitalismus. Dabei spricht sie Themen wie weibliche Lust, Care-Arbeit, Essstörungen, die Notwendigkeit eines Transfeminismus' und die Art, wie Frauen Raum einnehmen an. Pennys Leidenschaft ist dabei nicht zu überlesen. Sie kritisiert scharf und stellt provokative Thesen auf. Im Grunde mag ich starke Statements und provokative Forderungen, denn sie zeigen das Unrecht, von dem sie sich abgrenzen, noch deutlicher auf. Bei "Fleischmarkt" fiel es mir jedoch schwer, Pennys doch sehr polemischen Ton beim Lesen anzunehmen. Des Öfteren erwischte ich mich dabei, wie ich mich instinktiv gegen das Gefühl wehrte, mir werde eine Meinung aufgedrängt. Das, was sie sagt, ist ohne Frage wichtig und es benötigt oftmals Provokation, um die Dringlichkeit eines Themas zu verdeutlichen. Allerdings wird ein Dialog bei derartiger Radikalität, z.B. zum Thema Sexarbeit und Pornografie, kaum mehr möglich.

Auch ihre kontroversen Aussagen zu Israel und dem Holocaust sollten immer kritisch mitgedacht werden.
Da dieses Buch bereits vor zehn Jahren erschienen ist (Penny war damals 26), bin ich gespannt, ob und wie sich ihr Schreiben und ihr Denken in „Unsagbare Dinge“ verändert hat.

[Liam Porter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Laure Penny's book is part political polemic, part psychological/philosophical investigation of misogyny - especially the misogyny she sees stemming from the media. She makes heavy rhetorical use of metaphors such as slavery, violence and decay. Concepts such as "drudgery" "cruel machines" "butchery", "the stink of one's flesh" "cannibalism", and "brutality" appear on every page. It is a book of essays, yet the heavy tone of the thing is persistent regardless of topic.

Penny's choice of words, e.g. "society" "the culture", "the world" etc., generalize in order to create a ghoulish personification of the media and its effects on young women:

"[society] condemns young women as wanton strumpets," "[women] are destroying themselves and western society, fostering a deep loathing for female flesh, applauds them for doing so."

Reading this book, you start to get the feeling that - between the capitalist system and bodily violence - you are not quite sure what is being used as a metaphor for what. I suppose that's the artistic intention. The uncomfortable metaphors of bodily violence and unclean physicality are superimposed upon society so that we can see what they have in common: namely they cause similar suffering and degradation, according to Penny.

However, beyond mere "artistic" intention are the arguments that she advances. Take, for example how she describes her own anoxeria as "a rebellion by self-immolation, by taking society's standards of thinness, beauty and self-denial to their logical extremes". In a nutshell, anorexia is "a rebellion against society", which I think, though she would deny it, glorifies her self-abuse.

Keep that in mind, because in the next block quote, Penny also calls the "starvation psychosis" an "enforced" on - a contrast to the comparison of the psychosis with "self-immolation" (i.e. rebellion against the enforcers):

Women are not powerless beings without agency, even in this circumscribed culture, and only by acknowledging that fact will we ever achieve full adult emancipation, or ever save ourselves from the hell of narcissistic self-negation. We need to take responsibility for our part in the cruel machine of enforced feminine starvation psychosis. To do anything else would be to accept our own victimhood. p.29

I absolutely agree, however, that young women should realize that they need to be empowered to be exactly who they want to be. They should do whatever they want to do whether it fits in with the supposed norms of society or not. I hope that women will be wary of what the media is telling them about their own minds and bodies. They should especially watch out for when capitalistic corporations are selling them junk they don't need. On that I think all sensible people could agree.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meat Market is miles ahead of its contemporaries – I’m thinking of Jessica Valenti’s brand of pop feminism particularly here – but it’s not without its problems. Tonally, Laurie Penny writes engagingly, but the prose can slip into overwrought (see: "The frigidity of mercantile eroticism is the ghost at this feast, which is why nearly every public conversation about sexual morality fails to distinguish between consumer culture's brutally identikit traffic in sexual signs and sex itself"). The text is in need of a better editor in these parts, as well as in a few areas where the wording is confusing - for instance, where Penny gives an uncited eating disorder statistic twice in two sentences. More fundamentally, however, I’m unclear who she’s writing for: I would tend to think that people who are acquainted with the theorists she mentions in passing (Lacan, Baudrillard, and so on) would also probably have an elementary understanding of the basic tenets of liberal and Marxist feminism, which is all that this text really provides. Those who have not studied any social sciences are likely to feel alienated by the text’s tone and the assumed acquaintance with these forms of knowledge. The level of analysis is fairly superficial, and there’s nothing really novel or original that Penny provides in terms of argument. Lastly, given the text’s length, she bites off more than she can chew, and the end result is somewhat scattered. It read more like a well-written Marie Claire article.

[Karmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

On one side quite progressive ideas on feminist theory but on the other side also very short sided and severely missing class consciousness and global perspective.

[Adeel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my first foray into reading feminist literature, its quite short, just about 70 page, more like a pamphlet length, and given its length I might seem daft expecting it to be concrete; but really, whether its 70 pages or 1000 the nature of these writings is all the same, and apply to all feminism. The criticism is not particular to Laurie Penny, I'm sure she wrote this in the usual activist manner as a pamphlet that she probably did not think twice about and thought that was that. Reading this now years later its just became painfully obvious how all this talk about "capitalism" (a word Marx even was not so keen on using instead preferring mode of production) is just empty phraseology. So immediately it is clear the kind of leftist thought process it comes from, we have all the lexicon of "neo-liberalism", "consumption" and "late capitalism" etc without any concrete analysis to what these words are supposed to even mean, and why these new concepts are required in place of Marx's analysis. We have talk of "consumption society" abstracted completely from the class that best embodies such consumption; a class that opposite to the capitalist class which personifies production for productions sake, a class for consumption for consumption's sake is in this case the modern middle class (all well and perfectly predicted by Marx, but this should not be surprising given the period Marx was analyzing had already reached complete maturity in production)

|[240] “When Sismondi says that the development of the productive powers of labour makes it possible for the labourer to obtain ever-increasing enjoyments, but that these very requirements, if put at his disposal, would make him unfit for labour (as a wage labourer) (…) it is equally true that the industrial capitalist becomes more or less unable to fulfil his function as soon as he personifies the enjoyment of wealth, as soon as he wants the accumulation of pleasures instead of the pleasure of accumulation. (…) he is therefore also a producer of overproduction, production for others. Over against this overproduction on one side must be placed overconsumption on the other, production for the sake of production must be confronted by consumption for the sake of consumption. When the industrial capitalist has to surrender to landlords, the State, creditors of the state, the church, and so forth, who only consume revenue, is an absolute diminution of his wealth, but it keeps his lust for enrichment going and thus preserves his capitalist soul.” (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Collected Works Vol. 31, p. 180)| Here it should be obvious enough that just like religious institutions, the function of the middle class is prima facie in the squandering of surplus value (as a defense mechanism of capital to overproduction)

The lack of any clarity on production relations, and the throwing aboard of Marx's conceptions a-priori (because it is just widely accepted now in all academic posturing) without demonstrating what exactly is outdated, but we really cannot except anything else from leftists likewise feminists.

It is not that Marxism is fixed, dogmatic and that we should resolve ours to repeating the statements of Engels, Bebel on gender and do no more; it is incredibly multifaceted and there is growth in analytical prowess that never ends for just like any other science, it must make infinite progress towards its object, which also advances. Just take for example, we know that Marx, and the old communists (Lenin etc) did not speak of gender-abolition, is it because they were misogynists? It is easy to demonstrate this conceptually that this is because gender-abolition had to be discovered in social practice first when the forms and forces of production came into a level of conflict that would reveal this. That is the reason Marx did not comment on gender abolition nor could he have - the organic movement of capitalist society had not matured to turn gender into a fetter on the productive forces. Instead of undermining the Marxist-framework, this only proves it.


Of course, this text mentions Firestone (how could it not) for how it speaks of "revolutionary feminism"; a completely bankrupt theory dead as in political economy before its even born, where ultimately the fight really just boils down to the battle between sexes, and if there is ever acknowledgement that capitalist production cannot completely address "patriarchy" it amounts to a nothing-burger when what exactly what the mechanisms of this mode of production are, aren't even understood and neither what will replace it (communism)
Here we also have discussion of the sex-industry, sex-work without a single reference to productive/unproductive labor, and classes. Completely empty-headed and not even worth bothering to discuss.
And oh, trust me; it does not get better with "marxist feminism"; take the example of Silvia Federici whose historical work (Caliban and the witch) is filled with complete inaccuracies shoddy work ( Christophe Darmangeat's critique written in French, translated by Intransigence) , the usual protest against "neo-liberalism", "United nations, US-Aid" Etc etc and demand for domestic unproductive female labor to be paid!! This is what the radical proponents of feminism really amount to.

An actual worthy contribution on the topic of gender, sex from a Marxist basis is this https://endnotes.org.uk/translations/...
Even this, however has errors in its methodologies in its usage of "real/formal subsumption", a historical stage of capitalist maturity that Marx ascribes to the 19th century, which however a bunch of French Ultra left groups attribute to the 20th/21st due to Roger Dangeville's insertion of the word "phase" into the original manuscript.
|In Capital Volume I, published in his lifetime, and translated into French in a translation he reread – which does not mean that a countersense may exist – he wrote about the concept translated into French as “subordination”[8]. Consequently, in order to be coherent, it is correct to talk about formal subordination (or subsumption) and real subordination (subsumption) of labour to (or under) capital.

The notion of the real domination of capital, leaving aside these revisionist intentions, also meant the abandonment of the point of view of the proletariat to the advantage of inter-classist positions in the new series of Invariance, where today’s “communisers” are the heralds, opening the road to the complete abandonment of revolutionary positions.

We should take a moment to mention another aspect of this episode. Comrades in Germany told us that Marx never used the term “phase” in the German texts. In the text of the “Chapitre inédit de Marx” published in French, it appears in a chapter heading added by Roger Dangeville, not one written by Marx. Consequently, it is not the case of founding a new course on these concepts with a new break which could justify changes in the political orientation characterising, in brief, the “ultra-left”. THE THEORY OF THE CATASTROPHIC CRISIS OF THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION - Robin Goodfellow|

[bunybladee · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfekt

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ‘book’ reads more like a couple of long articles in a magazine which most people would probably only skim, but since it’s in a book I read it all rather than skimmed it.

The real theme of this book is to ‘unthink what we think we know but don’t’. Plato tells me in ‘The Sophist’ through his Eleatic Stranger that those who think they know but are wrong constitute one of the worst of the epistemological errors. We’re thrown into a world of not our own making and get bombarded with distractions, ambiguity and a cultural identity foisted upon us from an unrelenting capitalistic stifling conforming to the norm nameless machine (or as Deleuze would say ‘the body without an organ’). (The author did not mention Adorno’s ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ or Deleuze’s ‘Anti-Oedipal’ both of which would overlap with the author’s similar theme, but she does mention Friedan’s ‘Feminine Mystique’, and that book clearly was a template for what she was getting at. BTW, Friedan does a better job overall).

Prostitution, house work drudgery, transgender, and anorexia are highlighted within this book. There is definitely a 2011 vibe to this book. The world has moved ahead. Sure, we’ve elected a president who grabs any woman he wants ‘by the pussy’, or can rape a woman on Fifth Avenue with as much immunity as when he claimed he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue, or appoints a rapist for the Supreme Court (oh, wait, an ‘alleged rapist’ who has only been credibly accused of rape and was made clear after a 2 day pretend intensive investigation by the FBI). What do I mean the world has changed? Remember in 2008 (three years before this book) is when California had voted down Proposition 8 (hate?) fully endorsed by the Latter Day Saints (Mormons, or as I prefer to call them using their twisted logic ‘hater’s of the sin but not haters of the person’ whatever that means). Today nobody except fascist, Trumpites or just haters would be against gay marriage (do I need to add a fourth category: evangelicals, but aren’t they included at least 80% within the first three categories?????).

The author’s first hand report on anorexia was worth the price of the book (It actually free for those who go to edpf.pub). The University of Minnesota study from 1944 on ‘volunteer’ conscientious objectors not eating and leading to some ‘voluntarily’ cutting off three fingers or becoming clinically depressed to the point of being suicidal was disgustingly interesting if only for the complete lack of ethics some scientist had in 1944 when it came to performing unethical experiments.

The perception in the past of transgender people being bitter homosexuals needed to be fully refuted in 2011 (the year the book was written), today, probably not so much. The world (except of course for fascist, Trumpites or just haters and once again I don’t know if I should include evangelicals since they are already most likely already in one of those three categories) has moved away from binary categorical thinking and we now know gender is on a spectrum (I enjoyed two books fairly recently on transgender, ‘Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story’, and ‘Real Queer America’, both provide further insight on why the world of gender is best thought of as non-binary).

I can’t really say this book broke new ground for me (except for that incredibly unethical experiment from 1944). It’s not really a book. It does give an incredibly useful reflection on how we needed to think in 2011 and how we need to rethink by unthinking today.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Destroys its own argument whenever it talks about men. Tried too hard to be quotable rather than truthful. Comes up with a story (completely unsourced) saying that the hunter-gatherer myths are of all things, a Judeo-Christian idea. A shame, because this could have been so good if it had been without bias.

[Paula Katerina · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5/5 - prägnant und schonungslos ehrlich, teilweise aber ein bisschen in die jahre gekommen

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laurie Penny is one of those writers who seems to evoke powerful (a synonym for hostile) emotions – at least if we rely too much on the responses sections of columns on newspaper websites, for instance where her Guardian columns regularly seem to bring out the misogynist element of that liberal paper’s readership. On the plus side, such vituperative anger must be a sign of speaking the truth to power. This small book (only 66 pages) is evidence of her impressive analytical ability, a daunting set of skills in linking high level theory to everyday practice and accessible language and a powerful theoretical mind.

She has managed an impressive synthesis of materialist analysis that draws on many of the best bits of radical feminist writing – especially Shulamith Firestone – as well as socialist and Marxist feminist analyses through a discussion of the state and place of women’s bodies in capitalist patriarchy. Now there’s a sentence that has an un-21st century feel to it, when feminism has become all about the right to be who you want to be in a sort of be-here-now, be-me-now shallowness of consumerism, but Penny takes us into the core of feminist analysis to explore the systemic oppression of women in a patriarchal system alongside the systematic alienation of men and women by the fracturing forces of capitalism. What is more, in synthesising the divergent strands of materialist feminism she has reminded us that many of the heated debates of the past (I am reminded of many embarrassing moments in the 1980s) centred on differences in analysis and theory that were far smaller than they seemed at the time – although her critique of essentialism leads me to conclude that she inclines more towards the socialist/Marxist version of materialism than Firestone’s radical feminism (but equally that might be my orientation coming through).

That paragraph makes the book seem more intimidating than it is: when it comes down to it, Penny is a journalist and a public intellectual. She makes her points by telling stories – sometimes individual and deeply personal, sometimes collective or through the words of public activists, sometimes by fleshing out the stories behind the statistics by pointing out many of the possible meanings they may have. She manages to weave together sexualisation, eating disorders, transgender issues, domestic work and a myriad other issues to show us how the multifaceted control of women’s bodies is played out in the everyday. Her revisiting and linking of the domestic labour debate to wider issues of globalised women’s labour and trafficking is worth the book itself.

Of course there are things missing (it is only 66 pages), but that’s not the point of the book of the excellent Zer0 Books series it is part of: many of us will grumble about why she hasn’t dealt with issue X or favoured topic Y (I would have liked to see her address the links between body control in capitalist patriarchy and organised workers’ struggles, for instance, or gender-class consciousness). A real strength is that the collective appears as a powerful site throughout the book – from organised women’s groups and campaigns to a spirited reminder that “the personal is political precisely because our bodies are a collective site of material production [I’d also add reproduction]” which leads her to a reminder of the power of the simple word ‘no’ – the one word women are not supposed to use, and even when they do it is more often than not taken to mean ‘yes’. Penny’s prose and analysis have given us an excellent primer in feminism: this is a vital reminder of how and why feminism matters, suggests how far we’ve come and reminds us just how far we have to go.

See also Jennie O’Hara at http://www.redpepper.org.uk/sex-posit...

[Booktearainyday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Potrei anche dare di più, ma il capitolo sui disturbi alimentari mi ha indispettito. Mi rendo conto che da un libro così breve non dovrei aspettarmi troppo, ma ha mostrato una visione troppo settoriale dei disturbi, in particolare l'anoressia. Ovviamente presenta una visione femminista che ha il suo fascino e certamente porta dei fattori di cui tenere conto, ma il mio lato da psicologa si ribella, perché ci sono molti altre ragioni da considerare.

[Finni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das Problem der mit dem Kapitalismus fortschreitenden Sexualisierung wird hier gut auf den Punkt gebracht. Penny zeigt uns, warum wir den Feminismus auch in der heutigen Gesellschaft unbedingt brauchen!

[Caroline Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, that was good.

[Mia-Shmr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dieses Buch liest sich recht schnell, aber dadurch gehen die genannten Themen nicht genug in die Tiefe und bleiben eher oberflächlich.
Das Kapitel über Transsexuelle und die Wichtigkeit diese in den feministischen Diskurs mit einzubeziehen, hat mir sehr gefallen, da die Autorin die Meinungen von Feministinnen, die Transsexuellen gegenüber kritisch stehen, nennt und dann deren Argumente entkräftet, sowie auch Meinungen von Transaktivist*innen inkludiert.
Sprachlich war es jedoch manchmal unverständlich, weil die Autorin viele Fremdwörter benutzt, die nicht extra erklärt werden.
Alles in allem, hatte ich mir mehr erhofft, aber es lohnt sich trotzdem zu lesen.

[Mehtap exotiquetv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kurz und knackige Gesellschaftskritik zu dem Thema „sexualisierte Frauenkörper“.
Laurie Penny geht sehr hart ins Gericht mit der Gesellschaft. Sie umreißt Themen wie Prostitution, Anorexie, Transgender, Werbung und das Patriarchat.
Ich habe das Buch in 30 Minuten durchgelesen. Dementsprechend ist es jetzt vom Tiefgang des Inhalts nicht so vielversprechend. Was ich ein bisschen schade fand. So ein Thema sollte in der Tiefe verarbeitet werden und nicht wie ein kleiner Zeitungsartikel.

[Hannah Staudt · Rating 5 out of 5]

slay 💅🏻

[prostderpoesie · Rating 4 out of 5]

tw: essstörungen und suizidgedanken

laurie penny zieht kluge verbindungen, wie das patriarchat und der merkantile spätkapitalismus sich gegenseitig bedingen und befeuern.
penny zeigt die gesamtgesellschaftliche abwertung des fleisches auf, das als weiblich konnotiert wird und plädiert für einen intersektionalen feminismus ohne terfs, denn transphobie und misogynie hängen für sie eng mit der unterdrückung von körpern zusammen. besonders gelungen fand ich das kapitel zu essstörungen: denn wer profitiert davon, wenn flinta* sich kleiner, dünner, schwacher machen?
alles in allem gerade für die 2010er spannende thesen, um in den materiellen feminismus einzusteigen.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

all'inizio mi dava l'idea di essere un po' banalotto e di ripetere cose sentite e risentite, arrivata alla fine invece mi è sembrato talmente illuminante che vorrei consigliarlo a tuttə

[Aylin Kuhls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laurie Penny ist eine der großen, wütenden Feministinnen unserer Zeit. Sie behandelt hier in 4 Essays verschiedene Aspekte und ihren gesellschaftlichen Blick auf Weiblichkeit.

Insgesamt (nach mittlerweile doch schon 12 Jahren) etwas antiquiert und nicht immer besonders zugänglich.
Dennoch war und ist sie eine Vorreiterin des Diskurses und verdient weiterhin Beachtung.

[Josse Noynaert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zo fucking goed. Zalig geschreven, scherp, confronterend, gedurfd. Voor wie twijfelt om feministische literatuur een kans te geven: het is maar 66 pagina's en ik leen het uit met plezier.

[Josefine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful companion piece to Andi Zeisler's We Used to be Feminists Once, hitting on a more personal and emotional level where Zeisler keeps her subjective views fairly restrained. It was an engaging read, articulating many of the thoughts and ideas regarding the connections between capitalism and feminism which I hadn't quite managed to put into words before, giving me, in a way, the vocabulary to deal with my own aversion to continue pandering to the market by shopping constantly (sadly, it can't be avoided entirely, because one does need clothes and shoes occasionally...) as well as helping me further to deal with body image issues.

There's valid criticism in Penny's lack of intersectionality, clearly focusing on white Western women, but given the length and the focus of the book (unfortunately, as Zeisler points out as well, the media, the marketplace, the advertising industry of the Western world – they all continue to be predominantly aimed at white women), it's passable. She does, however, dedicate an entire chapter to the role of trans women and their role in the feminist movement, calling out the anti-trans position of many big name critics and theorists in feminism, stressing the importance of trans people (people of all genders) in tearing down the binary that exists between male and female which, of course, lies at the core of feminism.

The urgency and immediacy of the language used in the book, the fact that it's more of a personal essay than an academic analysis, is, in my opinion, a definite strength: it instantly involved me as a reader in its call to arms. Speaking in extremes, which have been called out in some of the reviews on here, is a strategy. Only when we get angry and frustrated enough, shaken up from complacency, we'll actually do something.

[Dan Sharber · Rating 4 out of 5]

very short but i really liked this book. i am very much pleased to see a different, underrepresented brand of feminism get its due. this is a feminism that sees the role of capitalism, the intersections of class and the liberatory possibility of collectivity. it is a materialist or marxist type of dialectical feminism that is refreshing. while the theoretical underpinnings of that sort of feminism are not elaborated within this book (this was not the intention of the book), they are clear in the way penny tackles the issues she chooses to address. her chapter on the necessity of trans inclusion in the feminist movement was particularly refreshing. and an entirely necessary corrective to a lot of the wrong-headed views on what trans people 'mean' or 'represent' within society and what their role should (or usually shouldn't) be in the feminist movement. i was particularly pleased with her desire to revitalize the movement for paid housework. as she states, that demand went into a corner somewhere and died. but it is something that any serious feminist should take up again and none have (with the exception of some marxist feminists) in a very long time. for people that are entrenched in the feminist movement and are well read, there is nothing necessarily ground breaking here - and that is not to take anything at all away from this book. but what is great about it is that penny places herself squarely in the camp of a new anti-capitalist feminism that is taking root and that can be a force of true emancipation and perhaps better avoid the blind-alleys and pitfalls of earlier feminist movements.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this short analysis of the role women's bodies play in capitalism. I haven't often encountered a feminist who writes with a clear class analysis in mind, although this book could have gone farther into the roles that racism and migration have with female bodies.

It was refreshing also to encounter a text which so eloquently integrates the role of trans bodies and sex workers under capitalist regimes, and which so overwhelmingly impresses the importance of these voices within the feminist movement.

I detracted one star because this text does not adequately propose any solutions or a manifesto of action. "We cannot fuck our way to freedom...We cannot shop our way to freedom...We cannot fight the system on our own...Only by remembering how to say 'no' will the women of the 21st century regain their voice and remember their power." Okay, so basically we need to overthrow capitalism before women can be free or equal. I'm with you on this. However, what this book lacks is a proposal on how to start or what a reasonable alternative is.

I also wish this book would have mentioned the role of unions or organized labour under capitalism and how the feminist movement has/should work to overcome capitalism with unions as a partner.

[➸ Gwen de Sade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Großartig, Laurie Penny bringt es einfach auf den Punkt. Sollte jede:r mal gelesen, haben, um auch die Abstraktesten Zusammenhänge zu verstehen, diese sind hier sehr gut veranschaulicht. Auch die schonungslose Ehrlichkeit von Penny ist sehr beeindruckend und eine Inspiration.

[Anna]

4 Sterne weil ich inhaltlich wirklich zum allergrößten Teil zustimme, einer Abzug, weil:

Die Kapitel sind recht kurz und können deshalb im Rahmen jedes Themas nicht so sehr in die Tiefe gehen, da hätte ich mir manchmal aber ein paar mehr Hintergründe oder Erklärungen gewünscht. Ich hatte den Eindruck das Buch soll eher einmal einen Rundumschlag leisten und durch schnell lesbare Texte politisieren und agitieren.
Gerade damit im Hinterkopf fällt allerdings irgendwie negativ auf, dass so „schwierige“ Sprache verwendet wird. Mein Lesefluss wurde immer mal wieder gestört von wirklich ziemlich komplizierten Satzkonstrukionen und Wörtern, die ich so einfach noch nie gehört hatte (was nicht schlimm ist, man kann ja anspruchsvoll schreiben und ich bin gerne bereit Wörter nachzuschauen, die ich nicht kenne, nur dafür war mir das, was man dann hinterher entschlüsselt hatte einfach nicht tiefgreifend genug).

Trotzdem hat es Spass gemacht zu lesen, ich habe es an einem Abend durchgefetzt, weil es mich nicht losgelassen hat. Ich habe schon auch einiges mitgenommen und gelernt und würde es alles in allem empfehlen!

[Ian]

Searing and unapologetic. "Femininity itself has become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to women who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings."