ALL MEN ARE TRASH

by Gina Ranalli, Christine Morgan (Editor)

Calm down. You’re overreacting. Make me a sammich. Don’t get so emotional. What, are you on your period or something? Nice tits. You should smile more. Moody bitch. I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Feminazi. If a man has said any or all of these things to you, you may be entitled to compensation! You may be entitled to it, but you won’t get it. What will you get? Microaggressions, harassment, gaslighting, less pay for the same job, little say over your own body and reproductive rights ... but wait! There’s more! So much more! It never ends. And aren’t you goddamn sick of it? Haven’t you had e-fucking-nough? Well, good news! The moment has come. The hour is nigh. The women of the world are ready to stand up, stand together, and make themselves heard as if with one voice. Ladies, it’s time to take out the trash."

212 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 14, 2020

About the author

Gina Ranalli is the author of several novels, including Mothman Emerged, Rumors of My Death, Praise the Dead, House of Fallen Trees, Suicide Girls in the Afterlife, Chemical Gardens, Wall of Kiss, and Mother Puncher. Her collection, 13 Thorns (with Gus Fink) won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Story Collection of 2007. Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications including Bits of the Dead, The Beast Within, Horror Library Volume 3, and Dead Science, among others.

Gina lives in Washington state where she is working on her next novel. You can communicate with her online at www.ginaranalli.com and on twitter at http://twitter.com/GinaRanalli

Reviews

[Michael Allen Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the controversy around the title of this book. I love it because it points out the exact reason I presume Ranalli wrote it. She has taken the well-worn tropes of violent sexual assault, random violence, and abject cruelty toward women in horror stories, and flipped it over like a mossy rock to see what's underneath. More than once, I found myself looking at the extreme violence on the page, perpetrated (mostly) on men, and thought "Jesus, why? So arbitrary! Pointless!" and that is exactly the point. Why is it so weird when these things happen to a man, as perpetrated by a woman, in this kind of fiction? That's a question worth asking, and exploring our desensitized nature seems to be the point of this stunning, wet, sticky story of revenge and all out war between the sexes.

I did think it was going to go to a slightly different place, which I was excited about, and I suppose that is my reason for 4 stars. Without spoiling anything, there are subtle nods here to the reason all this violence is suddenly sparking, and it seems to indicate that a certain personal device and our constant vigilance over its use might be assisting the spiraling psychopathy. I would have loved to see that plotline develop more, as I thought there was some glorious satire about our 24/7 plugged in status there as well, but it remained a subtle nod and wasn't made too explicit.

It's hard to call this book "fun," exactly, but for a certain reader, it definitely is, and of course it's all sewn together by Gina Ranalli's propulsive and gutsy style. That alone makes it worth checking out. Plus, reading a book like this on the subway is bound to start a conversation or two.

P.S. If you're a dude offended by the the title and want to write "Not all men!" or some other MRA BS as a review, you're exactly who this book is really about.

[Richard Longmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

The night that micro-aggressions have macro-consequences.

The world we live in is unfair. Culture forces people into divisions, empowering some and cutting down others for seemingly random reasons, like gender, race, sexual orientation. Gina Ranalli begins our tale by devoting early chapters to different people, some men, some women. Each has some kind of conflict at the start. A man is dismissive of women and is attacked. A husband gaslights his wife and is also attacked. A lesbian couple notices multiple fights that, at a distance, appear to be women attacking men.

The lives of the characters merge partway through and we find that the day of reckoning for men has apparently come. One character states they don't want to kill them all, just a general culling to put them in their place. So don't get too worried, gents.

I've seen similar topics before. Jack Ketchum's "Ladies Night". The movie "The Taint". The episode of Masters of Horror "The Screwfly Solution". What I appreciated about this take on it was that Gina Ranalli did a great job of showing the men being entitled and dismissive, indifferent, and generally just annoyed by the women they meet. This isn't a tale of the "Good Guys" trying to help restore balance from over-emotional ladies. It's also not an "I Spit on Your Grave" style story where it's clear that the men are so horrendous that the audience is salivating for vengeance. This is a tale where the final straw hit the camel's back.

And for those who are looking to say "not all men" before reading it, I can save you the breath. The book doesn't necessarily glorify the misandry. It, however, makes it clear that the cultural acceptance of misogyny has not gone unnoticed and every time a rapist goes free, an abuser gets a slap on the wrist, a resume goes in the trash before qualifications are even glanced at, every "Boys will be boys" - it's all adding up.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a "fun" read. I felt it took a while to get to a place where it didn't feel like a bunch of unrelated short stories because of the way the narrative was set up. So, I wouldn't call it a masterpiece. But I did enjoy the fact that it challenged me in a unique way, making me slightly uncomfortable only to think about times I read "gender swapped" versions of similar scenarios before without that discomfort and what it says about me and the world that shaped me.

Also, the cover is fucking hilarious.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gina! I need a sequel!!

Women taking revenge on men. I was honestly a little scared to read because I thought it was going to be really political. It wasn't.

Braum made me sick. Mark didn't really deserve to live as long as he had. Nikki shouldn't have died that way, but I think she needed to get her head together. It felt like she was going crazy but also like she was fighting with the right and wrong of it all.

I don't know. There is so much. I need more.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it, but didn't love it. Felt like the story was a little underdeveloped. I would love to read a sequel!

[Lex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am ready for this to happen... It was a joy to read. However, the story felt unfinished .

[Nikolas Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gina Ranalli has managed to write something cathartic with All Men Are Trash. This book is something necessary in response to cultures of incels and MRAs, as well as the sheer volume of toxic, sexist reactionary trolls attacking any attempt at inclusion or acknowledgment of intersectionality. In another (more superficial) sense, it's also a bit of fantasy violence geared toward women in the same way literally decades of fiction has provided men with a plethora of fantasy violence. It works on all fronts with equal efficacy.
Reading this book, I was reminded of two other works of fiction. There was a television series, Masters of Horror, quite a few years back, and one of the self-contained stories was entitled "The Screwfly Solution." The other fictional work it reminded me of was David Moody's series of books that started with the novel, Hater. Both of those works were built around the concept of sudden, unexpected violent impulses arising within the population and a stark division between "us" and "them" becoming the way of the new world. All Men Are Trash takes a similar concept and infuses it with strong feminist sensibilities and a whole lot of satisfying violence.
This is perhaps not a good book for anyone prone to say things like, "Not all men," or maybe it's precisely the sort of thing they should read...to gain a little bit of perspective.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this lol.

Did not think an all out war was going to happen in this book.