Неудобные женщины: История феминизма в 11 конфликтах

by Helen Lewis, Хелен Льюис, Александра Мороз (Translator)

Патриархальная культура веками навязывала женщине идеалы кротости, жертвенного служения и смирения, роль домашнего ангела, сладость подчинения. Героини Хелен Льюис — совсем не такие. Их имена окружали скандалы. Их сажали в тюрьмы, побивали камнями, а в нынешние времена — ведь нравы смягчились — просто осмеивают.

Сложные, нетерпимые, неудобные и эгоцентричные, порой агрессивные, порой смешные — оригиналки, чудачки, выскочки, они артикулировали имплицитные проблемы и показывали ненормальность привычного. Они ломали стереотипы, заставляли общество пересматривать гендерные конвенции, меняли уклад, правовые нормы и государственные институты — в интересах всех остальных. Бесстрастный педантизм историка-архивиста и честность журналиста-расследователя, аналитический ум, горячая эмпатия и готовность видеть малоприятную правду о своих героинях позволили Хелен Льюис написать трезвую, проницательную, горькую, веселую и бесстрашную историю феминизма, его побед и провалов. Без патетики и ресентимента рассказать о том, как половина человечества добивалась права распоряжаться своим телом и голосом, своим временем и доходами, права ошибаться и исправлять ошибки, права быть несовершенными — быть людьми.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Politics, Audiobook, Womens, Sociology

388 pages, Hardcover

First published February 27, 2020

Reviews

[Dannii Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as the title suggests, this non-fiction was split into eleven distinct but overlapping sections that each focused on a different area in the fight for equality between the sexes. Changing societal opinion is never an easy task and these individuals, both historically and in our contemporary society, who chose to go against this accepted grain are often branded as bossy, petulant, witchy, bitchy, frigid, and so much worse. In short, they are difficult women.

I found this essay collection to be empowering, illuminating, highly accessible, and informative. Every chapter was well-researched, highly detailed, easy to follow, and provided me with many names, dates, laws, and areas of history to go away and research into further. This both depicted how far we have come whilst also making us aware for how far we still have to go. I was as enraged as I was engrossed and this did its job perfectly of bolstering the reader to do their own part, no matter how small, in the ceaseless fight for equality.

[Mansoor · Rating 1 out of 5]

این کتاب به خوبی نشان می‌دهد که فمینیسم یک ایدئولوژی‌ست. نویسنده هیچ تلاشی برای مخاطب قرار دادن گروه‌های گسترده‌تر و متنوع‌تری از زنان نمی‌کند و چالش‌های بزرگ پیش روی فمینیسم را نادیده می‌گیرد. کارنامه‌ی فمینیسم نقاط تاریک زیادی دارد، در زمینه‌ی سلامت روان زنان، اشتغال، آزادی انتخاب، خانواده، پرنوگرافی و غیره. کافی‌ست بپرسیم چرا فمینیست‌ها امروز در برابر نقض حقوق جنسیت‌محور ساکتند*. (مراد از حقوق جنسیت‌محور جداسازی‌ها یا اختصاصی‌سازی‌هایی‌ست که در فعالیت‌ها و مکان‌های عمومی، به منظور تامین امنیت زنان و رعایت انصاف در حقشان، صورت می‌گیرد. مثل جداسازی ورزش زنان از ورزش مردان، جداسازی زندان زنان از زندان مردان، جداسازی توالت زنانه از توالت مردانه، جداسازی رختکن زنانه از رختکن مردانه، جداسازی بازرسی بدنی زنانه و مردانه در مکان‌هایی مثل فرودگاه یا اختصاص دادن اتاق‌هایی به مادران شیرده که مردان حق ورود به آنها را ندارند). بگذارید به نمونه‌ی تازه‌ای از پیامدهای این خیانت فمینیستی به زنان اشاره کنم. دختر دوازده ساله‌ای در سرویس بهداشتی مدرسه به دست یک پسر مورد تجاوز قرار می‌گیرد. با این حال، مسئولان مدرسه را از ماجرا مطلع نمی‌کند، چون واهمه دارد دیگران او را متعصب و "ترنس‌فوب" بدانند. واقعا سرسام‌آور است

اگر کسانی جنبشی سیاسی-اجتماعی به راه انداختند و اسمش را گذاشتند «حقیقت»، از این واقعیت نمی‌شود نتیجه گرفت که آرمان‌های آن جنبش و اعمال بنیانگذارانش در سمت حقیقت‌اند و اگر کسی با آن جنبش مخالفت کرد، دشمن حقیقت است. همین نکته‌ی به ظاهر ساده، در فضای سیاسی-اجتماعی روز، دستمایه‌ی استدلال‌های مغالطه‌آمیز و اتهام‌زنی به دیگران می‌شود. به همین منوال از این واقعیت که کسی مخالف فمینیسم است، نمی‌توان نتیجه گرفت که او ضدزن است. نمونه‌ی بارزی از این موضوع نویسنده‌ی همین کتاب است. هرکه فمینیسم را مردود می‌شمرد از نگاه او خطرناک و متعلق به جریان راست افراطی است. وقتی محافظه‌کاران در برابر روایت مسلط دست به مقاومت می‌زنند، معمولا از سوی فمینیست‌های لیبرال غالب متهم به "ضدفمینیست" بودن می‌شوند که نوعی ناسزا به شمار می‌رود. روایت مسلط از این قرار است: مردان سرکوبگر و زن‌ستیزند، زنان قربانیانی ستم‌دیده‌اند، همه‌ی مردان آرزوی تجاوز به ما را در سر می‌پرورند، ولو از ما خواستگاری نکنند یا حتی پاسخ تماس‌هایمان را ندهند، ده بار به او پیام داده‌ام، به گمانم شماره‌ام را مسدود کرده

بسیاری از جنبش‌های سیاسی-اجتماعی یک آرمان اولیه دارند که کارکردش جذب مخاطب و کوبیدن مخالفان است. ولی پشت آن آرمان اولیه (و معمولا معقول) آرمان‌های رادیکالشان را پنهان کرده‌اند. مثلا در مورد فمینیسم آرمان اولیه برابری حقوق زن و مرد است. کارکرد این آرمان از طرفی جذب مخاطب است-اگر به برابری حقوق زن و مرد باور داری، در جرگه‌ی ما هستی. ما همه فمینیستیم-و از طرف دیگر کوبیدن مخالفان-به محض این‌که شما با فمینیسم مخالفتی کردی، از سوی فمینیست‌ها متهم می‌شوی به این که برابری حقوق زن و مرد را قبول نداری یا ضدزنی. برابری حقوق زن و مرد درِ ورودی فمینیسم است. ولی پشتش ایدئولوژی‌ای‌ است که تا انکار تفاوت‌های بیولوژیکی دو جنس هم پیش می‌رود. زنان و مردان بسیاری هستند که به برابری حقوق زن و مرد اعتقاد قوی دارند، اما هرگز خودشان را فمینیست نمی‌خوانند


پی‌نوشت: در وضعیت متفاوت ایران، به جنبش فرهنگی آزادی‌خواهانه‌ای نیازمندیم که، به جای تقلید جریان‌های مد روز غربی، از جایگاه و شان برابر زن و مرد نوعی وفاق اجتماعی بسازد


*الان کار به جایی رسیده که یک ژورنال فمینیستی، عضو شورای سردبیری‌اش را به خاطر دفاع از زنان و حقوق جنسیت‌محور اخراج می‌کند. این رسوایی بزرگی برای فمینیسم است

[Emily B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely an informative and accessible book. If you have an interest in feminism then I would recommend this book.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Girls just wanna have fun
damental human rights

- Slogan on a banner

WHAT THIS BOOK ISN’T

I was after a history of feminism and in my male brain that would be a cool judicious account of all the great names, you know, Mary Shelley, Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, but nope, not at all, they only get some glancing references. This book is all about practical women, the feminists who did something to make women’s lives better, not the feminists who analysed why things were so terrible. You have to have both, but this book is about the doers.

ANOTHER GREAT QUOTE FROM ANDREA DWORKIN

Her definition of feminism:

A political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don’t like, including all the women you don’t want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don’t want anything to do with anymore.

WHAT IS DIFFICULT ABOUT DIFFICULT?

It kind of seems as if everybody eventually finds every single other person difficult these days, it’s been an irritable decade. I see that mostly this book gets 4 & 5 stars but very occasionally 1 or 2 because predictably it has been judged to be transphobic due (it appears) to using the term “male bodied” in one chapter. I can see that for some Helen Lewis herself is a difficult woman to be writing the history of feminism as she’s too white, too posh and too rich and too often on the television. (I realised half way through I’d seen her many times – ah, THAT Helen Lewis!)

NAMING NAMES

The issues and the difficult women are :

Divorce : Caroline Norton
The vote : Annie Kenney
Sex : Marie Stopes
Play : Lily Parr
Work : Jayaben Desai
Safety : Erin Pizzey
Love : Maureen Colquhoun
Education : Sophia Jex-Blake
Time : Selma James
Abortion : Diana King, Colette Devlin and Kitty O'Kane

Aside from Marie Stopes and Erin Pizzey, these were obscure names to me. Maureen Colquhoun, for instance, was the first out lesbian Member of Parliament in the 1970s and has been completely airbrushed from political history since then. I had never heard of her. (She died aged 92 in February this year.)

HOW DIFFICULT IS DIFFICULT ANYWAY? ANSWER : VERY

Erin Pizzey is the embodiment of the difficult woman. She is famous for establishing the first women’s refuge in Britain. She didn’t wait for any kind of official approval, she just went ahead and did it in 1971. Two years later a male MP got up in the House of Commons and opened a discussion on domestic violence, praising her Chiswick Aid Centre. She was watching from the public gallery. The chamber of the House of Commons was nearly empty. The MP said that if the debate had been about cruelty to dogs it would have been packed.

Women’s refuges – couldn’t be more feminist, right? Right. But when Erin Pizzey met up with other feminists she took an instant dislike and refused to have anything to do with them. It seems they were ultraleft Maoist feminists, but you might have thought she would meet some non-Maoists later. By 2009 she was writing for the Daily Mail an article called

Why I loathe feminism... and believe it will ultimately destroy the family

describing feminism as “a lie” and writing that “we must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women”. And now she is “an advocate for the Men’s Rights Movement, serving as editor-at-large of the anti-feminist website "A Voice for Men”. The boss of that site, Paul Elam, has called feminists "human garbage” and says that he would never vote guilty in a rape trial if he was a juror no matter what the evidence was. (For more information about these vermin see the excellent book Men who Hate Women by Laura Bates*).

So as Helen Lewis says “How does a woman go from founding England’s first refuge for domestic violence victims to hanging out with MRMs?”

The answer to that deserves a book in itself. HL mentions her own experience of what she calls “purity politics” and also “The Intersectionality War” which broke out on the internet in 2011 after the publication of How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran :

The next few years were bloody : feminism’s equivalent of a civil war. Fair and unfair criticisms blended into one giant screaming mass, fuelled by Twitter, and left everyone hurt and angry…. Online feminism became obsessed with language. A kind of priesthood had sprung up to adjudicate what terms could be used

You can tell HL is still reeling from all this :

Outrage had become prized for its own sake and online feminists had lost the ability to distinguish between genuine anger and mere spite. …My own trashing was a traumatic experience. I was accused of endangering lives because my rhetoric was so hate-filled that people reading it would surely kill themselves. I was a racist, I was a transphobe

So there is a parallel between Erin Pizzey and the Maoists of 1972 and Helen Lewis and the trans rights movement of 2011, I guess. I think HL or someone else probably needs to write a whole book about how contemporary feminism became such a minefield.**

SWIRLING, SURGING, EXHILARATING, DEPRESSING, UPLIFTING, LIKE FLOWING WATER, NEVER STILL FOR ONE MOMENT

I liked this a lot. Not the book I thought I was going to read, and like being locked in a washing machine of ideas with the setting on FULL SPIN.





*https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

**Has anyone tried to do this?

[Bella Briška · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I started this book, I was sure I was going to like it. The premise - honest stories about the imperfect lives of the women in feminist history - is so good, and after the first chapter, I was so keen to read more, learn more and be inspired of the struggles and successes of other women. And partially this book lived up to the promise. The historical stories were fascinating, empowering, and very necessary. But, boy, was I let down by Lewis's ignorant opinions throughout the middle section of the book.

I have 3 problems with this book - 2 minor ones, which I would've let pass pretty easily, and 1 major, which ruined the reading experience for me.

1) Lewis is explicitly negative towards sex work. That wouldn't be a problem in itself if she would explain herself properly, but instead, she just uses strawman arguments and presents sex work as something no woman would choose if she had other options. As she states herself, she doesn't watch porn, and when she tries to talk about it.. well it's clear she hasn't seen much of it.

2) Within the education chapter the topic is suddenly changed to the boys' challenges in schooling. That is an important thing to talk about, but it completely falls out of the narrative of the book, and I just couldn't understand why Lewis decided to dedicate the room in her book to this.

3) And now for the major one - total misrepresentation of what trans people and the contemporary LGBTQ + community stand for. It is very upsetting knowing how little the general public knows about the trans issues to read this woman - who either doesn't bother to gather information on what trans people think or decides to misrepresent them intentionally - rambling on about how "gender ideology" goes against what women have been fighting for. Her arguments on the subject are different variations of "I am all for trans people, BUT..." These "but"s make a strawman out of trans activists, for example, by claiming that they think it's transphobic if a lesbian is not interested in pursuing a relationship with trans women with male genitalia. The thing is - no one, except some anonymous marginal twitter account owners actually think this way. I don't know any trans people who think that people not being interested in sleeping with them are transphobes, but Lewis presents it as a default opinion of the trans community. Lewis artificially juxtaposes femininity with deviances of the traditional gender binary and creates conflict where there shouldn't be any. And I don't believe she is doing this accidentally, since she goes to describe how she has been criticized by others about these views - which means that she's had plenty of reason to examine the validity of her claims. Which she hasn't.

It's one thing to be a difficult woman - persistent, not willing to be nice, shy, and put your needs last - but it's another thing to be a bigoted woman, and we shouldn't mix two of those together.

There are good aspects of "Difficult Women", and I enjoyed reading parts of it. I also learned something new about history. But I think if you want to read the book, listen and read more about the lives of trans people in addition to it because the author clearly hasn't.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC received in exchange for an honest review

Feminism isn't a single idea, and is interpreted differently by every individual and their experiences. 'Difficult Women' never professes to be the definitive guide to what feminism is, but rather it is a book that is just one interpretation and one voice. However, what it does do is link a number of historical battles and difficult women together, distilled into 11 categories spill into the modern feminist era. I took a lot away from from this. From the different women that are given a fresh voice, to hearing how each of them define how they view feminism or their fight for equality was incredibly facinating. None of these women are perfect, all are difficult, and all of them are complicated individuals.

Some of these women included Annie Kenny, who was deeply involved in the Suffragette movement. Exasperated at lack of movement towards women's votes, she moved towards more extreme forms of activism in a heavily male dominated legal system. Any woman who fought for these rights was played down, brushed off as unimportant. Helen Lewis really helped bring to life what Annie Kenny was a person, a working class woman who just wanted to have what men had, and has somehow been left to fall into obscurity because she never fitted the Suffragette narrative of this upper class, well spoken woman.

There's also Marie Stopes, who was one for the first to grant access to birth control to desperate women. Her clinics granted women a degree of sexual liberation they'd never seen before, yet she was also incredibly snobbish, conservative, anti semetic and anti lesbian. She believed in eugenics and was also vehemently against abortion. Difficult women are not perfect, and sometimes their agenda, although good for the masses, is undertaken for selfish and flawed reasons.

The chapter of time was perhaps the most personal for me. It talks of the divergence of pay between men and women in their 30s, as women move to part time and unskilled work in order to take on the role of motherhood and child carer as this is what society has come to expect of women. Women as a result have less downtime, and less free time in general compared to their male counterparts because society often makes us feel guilty into doing the majority of the housework and organising. Our time never seems to be our own, and this rang so true for myself as a mother.

Interesting deep dive into some facinating 'difficult women' that helps open the doors into further research on feminism and equal rights.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feminism is a fight for equality-- it doesn't come from or aim for perfection. Here, Helen Lewis gives a welcome intro to some of the women who might not always have got it right, but still tried to get it done. This is her attempt to make sure progress doesn't erase the struggle. We need to know how we got to now and who fought for the rights we take for granted in order to take their successes and move them forward. It's a determinedly provocative book, a call for everyone to look harder at the world around them, understand diverse voices by listening to what they say, ACT for equality.

There's so much more to do, but in reading this you can be bolstered by seeing what can be achieved when women decide to be DIFFICULT.


ARC via Netgalley

[Dagio_maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non dovete chiedere per favore.
Potrete essere difficili senza che nessuno vi dia della difficile


Essere donna non significa essere femminista.
Essere femminista non significa essere perfette (e ci mancherebbe!).

Così la Lewis vuole ricondurre alcune figure emblematiche ed il movimento stesso ad una dimensione meno epica e più umana.
Troppo spesso le macchie sono state candeggiate ed necessario restituire un’immagine più veritiera, ossia quella che ci racconta di personalità complicate e, a volte, contraddittorie, insomma non certamente monocromatiche.

Donne arrestate, torturate, denigrate per aver portato avanti le loro idee ma le stesse donne hanno ristretto il campo al loro vissuto oppure hanno radicalizzato e/o escluso gli altri punti vista.

Attenzione, le 11 battaglie annunciate nel titolo hanno tutte come protagoniste donne inglesi ciò non toglie che le tematiche siano assolutamente transnazionali.
Nello specifico si parla di:
divorzio
voto
sesso
gioco (sportivo)
lavoro
sicurezza
amore
istruzione
tempo
aborto .

Molte domande rimangono senza risposta.
Molte problematiche insolute.
La questione femminile è ancora aperta e, per di più, tormentata dalle continue polemiche, divisioni che hanno nel tempo solo i detrattori facendo spesso fare dei passi da gambero al movimento.

Helen Lewis, è una scrittrice e giornalista britannica con una brillante carriera ci parla degli attacchi che lei stessa ha subito.
Lo racconta, a mio avviso, senza voler fare la vittima ma con il chiaro intento di far capire il pericolo amplificato dalla rete della diffusione dell’odio.

In ogni caso, essere difficile, in fin dei conti, è una prerogativa del movimento femminista stesso.

“Uccidere l’angelo del focolare”, come scrisse Virginia Woolf (a sua volta citando una vecchia poesia inglese), vuol dire scontrarsi con immagini del femminile talmente calcificate che non possono essere demolite se non con la forza.
Seppure la storia del movimento racchiuda anche questo, non è un richiamo alla violenza fisica quello che si intende ma alla forza verbale ed intellettuale; alla capacità di risultare persone problematiche pur di rendere visibili le ingiustizie.

Le donne devono combattere quella che Lewis chiama «la tirannia della gradevolezza» perché questa è una prerogativa (cioè essere gentili, piacevoli ecc.) che viene considerata innata nelle donne.
Beh, non è così.
Così come non è reale pensare che le donne che si sono spese nelle battaglie sociali e politiche siano donne che devono piacere per forza.
Insomma:

”La donna difficile non è sgarbata, gretta o cattiva. E’ solo decisa a fare la problematica se la situazione lo richiede; l’esigente se la circostanza lo vuole e l’ostinata se qualcuno prova a raggirarla. Non le importa un fico secco se “si è sempre fatto così”. E’ insensibile all’idea che per le donne sia “naturale” agire in un certo modo o rassegnarsi a uno status inferiore.”

[Kathryn E-E · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF- Negative views of sex work and terf-y vibes when talking about trans people

[Fariha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title captured my attention, although I hesitated several times before committing - last thing I wanted was to dedicate my limited evening relaxation hours to reading about the complex history of feminism! However, this turned out to so very different to my expectations (in a good way)!

The book was not only informative and interesting from start to finish, but also a fun read that kept me entertained. The author Helen Lewis, a journalist, had wit and humour, and also a way of explaining complex concepts in a light, everyday use style - and in fact, many a times brought me to laugh out loud too.

Feminism, how it’s interpreted, what it means, its objectives and outcomes - this was explored through spotlighting a number of British “difficult women” from history, split across 11 chapters on different thematic areas, e.g. abortion laws, education rights, divorce laws, women’s suffrage, domestic abuse and shelter provisions, migrant workers’ rights, women’s time poverty, etc.

No one changed the world by being nice, and Ms Lewis brings to life the pioneering “difficult women’s” long forgotten contributions that shapes the modern world we live in today, and the commodities of life we take for granted - just think, a century ago, women could not vote, own property, or control their fertility in Britain. We see these women’s extent of dedication and activism, often stemmed from passion and commitment to the issue, and often out of sheer helplessness in personal circumstances. What I appreciated very much is that Ms Lewis refrained from presenting a one-dimensional glorified view of these women, e.g. Marie Stopes, Annie Kenney, Erin Pizzey, Jayaben Desai, etc. and instead offered a very balanced one - with flaws and imperfections, which is very important to me, to not whitewash facts and British history.

There’s of course a long list of the many more battles that are yet to be won, to dismantle patriarchy and structural frameworks that uphold this system, which continues to contribute to the inequality of the sexes, but I thought the issues covered were very well researched and relevant to understanding our place in the world, taking into account the intersectionality of identities which further compounds oppression in different communities.

I loved the epilogue which defines what it is to be difficult over 3 pages- it’s super!

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bulgarian review first, followed by the English translation below

2026: В България от известно време сме в клещите между евразийския консервативен фундаментализъм и woke абсурда. И не остава почти никакво пространство за здрав разум и прагматизъм. Затова Люис дори и през 2026 е все още актуална - тя е гласът, хулен отдясно като истерична феминистка, а отляво - като трансфоб и унижаваща “почтените” труженички в проституцията. Но здравият разум при наличието на емоционална поляризация никога не е бил особено на почит…

24.06.2022
След като Върховният съд на САЩ отмени конституционно гарантираното право на аборт, и част от южните и западните щати моментално скокнаха с вече подготвена пълна забрана на аборта на тяхна територия (включително без значение на здравословни причини или поради изнасилване), книги като тази стават още по-важни. Не става дума за глупости от сорта на движения като #metoo, които са изпразнени от смисъл и дълбочина. Става дума за фундамент на живота, извоюван относително наскоро и торпилиран от религиозни екстремисти обратно в средновековието. Кое е следващото - отмяна на правото за гласуване и на образование и затваряне в кухнята?

Първоначално ревю:

”Жената с труден характер не е невъзпитана, дребнава или злобна. Тя просто не се страхува да бъде неудобна, ако случаят го изисква; и твърдоглава, ако някой се опита да я избута встрани. Не я интересува дали “винаги е било така”.

Хелън Люис определено раздвижва пластове. Пластове от спомени, представи, стереотипи, възгледи. Опитва се да (пре)дефинира движението, подето от "втория пол" (по определението на Симон дьо Бовоар), да изпълзи от сенките на историята, предрасъдъците и патриархата, за да заеме по-видимо място под слънцето. Извън трите К (Kueche, Kinder, Kirche = Кухня, Деца, Църква).

През 21-ви век феминизмът все още е противоречиво понятие, макар и не по начина и по причините от 19-ти и 20-ти век. Допадна ми подходът на Люис да се върне към първоизточника на движението за права на жените и защо изобщо е възникнал феминизмът. Всяко движение за права се бори за справедливост, която политическото, социалното, културното статукво не предвиждат.

Единайсетте тематични глави в книгата са единайсет ключови фокус точки, в които и днес на места жените са втора категория хора.

Правото на развод е изключително трудно извоювано, и там заслуга имат гласовитите аристократки с политически връзки от 19-ти век (и с прецакан от брака живот). В свирепо-католическа Ирландия това право е дадено едва през 1995 г., с едва 50,28% от гласовете на реферерендума.

Гласуването е друга щекотлива тема, вбесявала английските перове от камарата на лордовете и еквивалента им в други държави. Суфражетките, известни с често насилствените си методи, арестувани и хранени насила (това и сега е опасна процедура) в затворите, все пак оказват въздействие.

Опознаването на собственото тяло (вместо живописната, култивирана, така възхвалявана като прелестна наивност и невежество със смъртоносни понякога последствия), правото на аборт и контрацепция (като липсата му и днес води до смъртни случаи в иначе цивилизовани държави както доскоро в Ирландия, а лекарите не смеят да спасят живот в опасност, за да не се отклонят от бюрократичния протокол). Правото на упражняване на достойна професия с равностойното и заплащане, както и на достойно образование, отказвани само допреди 100 години като биологично (?!) неприсъщи на женския пол. Правото на открито и честно сексуално самоопределение при лесбийки и друга не-хетеро ориентация.

Това "завръщане" към фундамента на феминизма е един добър повод за преосмисляне на днешния ден. За много неща днешната жена в богатия свят може да се шегува, зmкато за тях майка и е била на нокти, а баба и не ги е и сънувала. Даже ми се струва, че в бившия Източен Блок някои от тези процеси са били доста по-интензивини отколкото на Запад, особено след втората световна война, когато много от условията за равни възможности за реализация на жените са заложени в законодателствата, поне в българското. Маркс и Енгелс не са били противници на жените. А и част от тези общества, по определението на Симон дьо Бовоар, са били "селски" - жените са участвали в работата по реколтата, а не са били затворени в замъци или дамски салони с корсети - така че част от условията в Обединеното Кралство никога не са съществували в този си вид, и преходът се е осъществил по различен начин.

Друг ценен момент при Люис е, че тя се завръща здравомислещата теза, че прогресът не иска морално съвършенство и повърхностна политкоректност. И че тъкмо противоречивите, често залитащи в различни крайности, личности, прокарали обаче важни реформи, са много по-ценни в общочовешки план от политкоректните папагали, задовляващи се със статуси в социалните мрежи и на които им липсва каквато и да е критичност и целенасочени действия. Или от изкукуригалите индивиди, правещи доноси в полицията срещу майки, оставили детето за 5 минути само в колата, докато му купуват лекарство от аптеката. Старата поговорка - лозето не ще молитва, а мотика.

Третият принос на Люис към темата за феминизма е обвързването и с куп други неразривно преплетени проблеми на дискриминацията. Дискриминация по раса, класа и сексуална ориентация, които стават двойно по-тежки, когато са съчетани и със женомразство и сексизъм.

Хелън Люис се фокусира изцяло върху примери от Обединеното Кралство, които често ми звучаха екзотично, като мъжките клубове за аристократи, явяващи се затворени социални и лобистки организации, една от причините поради които и днес в британския парламент и институции няма голям брой жени. Или пък борбата на група жени да имат право да пият на бар за юристи-мъже. Както и някои доста екзотично звучащи ми битки от по-ново време на ЛБГТ общността - например трансжените (непретърпели операция), обвиняващи лесбийките в тесногръдие, т.к. не ги искат за партньори. Ама как да ги искат - нали те технически са мъже?! Тези моменти стесниха картината до един-единствен остров, лишен от по-широка перспектива.

Напомнянето обаче е ценно. Средновековието често е само на някакви си 100 години разстояние, а в някои части на света е в процес на реконкиста или никога не си е тръгвало. Основите на всеки прогрес са доста крехки. И трябва да ги укрепваме.

***
▶️ Цитати:

🚺 “Ако съвременният феминизъм изглежда беззъб, то е, защото се е свил до два режима: празно прославяне или фиктивна борба с отявлените гадняри. Нито един от тях не се захваща с трудни задачи и поради това не мoже да промени нищо.”

🚺 “Аз лично така и не успях да разбера какво точно е феминизмът. Знам само, че хората ме наричат феминистка всеки път, когато изкажа мнение, което ме отличава от изтривалка или проститутка.”
Ребека Уест, 1913 г.

🚺 “Понякога, когато си мисля за феминисткото движение, се питам: “Как ни го натресоха това?”

🚺 “Женските дрехи са направени за красота, не за живот, а с тежките табута … за изпотяване уши цапане … се държат на практика обездвижени.”

🚺 “Да смущаваш и да излагаш хората е емоционално изтощителна работа.”

🚺 “Съвременните движения за освобождение често са мързеливи и приемат за даденост, че може да се намери просто решение…”

🚺 “Никой не “притежава” феминизма”

🚺 “Квотите предизвикват гневна съпротива и понякога карат хората да манипулират правилата, вместо да решат належащите проблеми.”

🚺 “Да носиш отговорност за собственото си щастие, по странна ирония е вид бреме.”

🚺 “Феминизмът винаги ще бъде трудно начинание.”

🚺 “Феминизмът трябва да се бори с тиранията на вежливостта.”

🚺 “Безукорни феминистки няма.”





2026: In Bulgaria, for some time now, we have been caught in the pincer movement between Eurasian conservative fundamentalism and "woke" absurdity. There is almost no space left for common sense and pragmatism. This is why Lewis remains so relevant even in 2026—she is the voice being reviled by the Right as a "hysterical feminist" and by the Left as a "transphobe" who allegedly demeans "respectable" sex workers. But then again, in the presence of extreme emotional polarization, common sense has never been held in particularly high regard...

24.06.2022
Following the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn the constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion, and as several southern and western states immediately moved to implement pre-prepared total bans on their territory (regardless of health reasons or cases of rape), books like this one become even more essential. This isn't about the nonsense surrounding movements like #metoo, which have been emptied of meaning and depth. This is about the very foundations of life, won relatively recently and now being torpedoed back into the Middle Ages by religious extremists. What comes next—the revocation of the right to vote and education, and being confined to the kitchen?

Original Review:

"A difficult woman is not ill-mannered, petty, or spiteful. She is simply unafraid to be inconvenient if the situation demands it; and headstrong if someone tries to push her aside. She doesn't care if 'it’s always been this way'."

Helen Lewis certainly shifts the tectonic plates of memories, perceptions, stereotypes, and views. She attempts to (re)define the movement sparked by the "second sex" (as defined by Simone de Beauvoir), crawling out from the shadows of history, prejudice, and patriarchy to take a more visible place under the sun—outside the three Ks (Küche, Kinder, Kirche = Kitchen, Children, Church).

In the 21st century, feminism remains a controversial concept, though not in the same way or for the same reasons as in the 19th and 20th centuries. I appreciated Lewis's approach of returning to the original source of the women's rights movement and why feminism emerged in the first place. Every rights movement fights for a justice that the political, social, and cultural status quo does not provide.

The eleven thematic chapters in the book are eleven key focus points where, in some places even today, women are treated as second-class citizens.

The right to divorce was won through extreme hardship, credited to vocal 19th-century aristocrats with political connections (and lives ruined by marriage). In fiercely Catholic Ireland, this right was granted only in 1995, with a mere 50.28% of the vote in a referendum.

Voting is another sensitive topic that infuriated English peers in the House of Lords and their equivalents elsewhere. The suffragettes, known for their often violent methods, arrested and force-fed in prisons (a dangerous procedure even today), nonetheless made an impact.

Then there is the understanding of one's own body (instead of the picturesque, cultivated "charming naivety" and ignorance that often had lethal consequences); the right to abortion and contraception (the lack of which still leads to deaths in otherwise civilized countries, as was the case until recently in Ireland, where doctors dared not save a life in danger to avoid deviating from bureaucratic protocol). The right to a dignified profession with equal pay, and to a proper education—denied just 100 years ago as biologically (?!) unsuited to the female sex. The right to open and honest sexual self-determination for lesbians and other non-hetero orientations.

This "return" to the bedrock of feminism is a good occasion to rethink the present day. The modern woman in the wealthy world can joke about many things for which her mother was on edge and her grandmother couldn't even dream of. It even seems to me that in the former Eastern Bloc, some of these processes were much more intensive than in the West, especially after WWII, when many conditions for equal opportunities for women were embedded in legislation, at least in Bulgaria. Marx and Engels were not opponents of women. Furthermore, part of these societies, as per Simone de Beauvoir’s definition, were "rural"—women participated in the harvest rather than being confined to castles or ladies' salons in corsets—so some of the conditions in the UK never existed in that form, and the transition occurred differently.

Another valuable point Lewis makes is her return to the common-sense thesis that progress does not require moral perfection or superficial political correctness. Controversial figures, often leaning toward different extremes but who pushed through vital reforms, are far more valuable in human terms than politically correct parrots satisfied with social media status updates and lacking any critical thinking or purposeful action. Or those erratic individuals reporting mothers to the police for leaving a child in a car for 5 minutes while buying medicine at a pharmacy. As the old saying goes: "A vineyard needs a hoe, not a prayer."

Lewis's third contribution to the topic of feminism is linking it to a host of other inextricably intertwined issues of discrimination—based on race, class, and sexual orientation—which become doubly burdensome when combined with misogyny and sexism.

Helen Lewis focuses entirely on examples from the UK, which often sounded exotic to me, such as the gentlemen’s clubs for aristocrats acting as closed social and lobbying organizations—one reason why there aren't more women in the British Parliament and institutions today. Or the struggle of a group of women for the right to drink at a bar for male lawyers. There are also some exotic-sounding modern battles within the LGBT community—for instance, trans women (who haven't undergone surgery) accusing lesbians of narrow-mindedness for not wanting them as partners. But how could they—technically, they are men?! These moments narrowed the picture to a single island, deprived of a broader perspective.

However, the reminder is valuable. The Middle Ages are often only about 100 years away, and in some parts of the world, they are in the process of a "reconquista" or never left at all. The foundations of any progress are quite fragile. And we must strengthen them.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult Women is a perfectly fitting title for this book; not because they were difficult but because it is definitely how they would’ve been portrayed at the time. Difficult in this sense actually means empowered, inspired and not afraid to speak the brutal truth. Not simply accepting that women should just put up and shut up about the lack of rights we have or once had in comparison to men. I am a firm believer in egalitarianism (equal rights for everyone) so I would class myself as a feminist but also someone who seeks equality across the board. I have read many, many books on this topic yet this was so refreshing and original showcasing those who have often been neglected in terms of their achievements. Sometimes fact-based nonfiction can be dry and a slog but I found this was eminently readable and raced through its thoroughly enjoyable pages like I would a fiction book. I urge those of you who wish to learn more about the history of feminism to pick this up. It’s well worth your time. Many thanks to Jonathan Cape for an ARC.

[Ioana-Maria Puscas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very important topic and stories. The book has the merit of highlighting the plight and fights (most often, against the odds) of important feminist figures but I found it to be absolutely terribly written. I had to do extra research after each chapter to understand better what particular cases, movements or feminist figures represented. I found the writing to be very chaotic, overloaded with useless examples and interposing random facts in the middle of a story. You're better off reading other books on these subjects or online sources.

[Effie Vlachou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting stories, indeed. I was hoping to read more a more detailed account, but beyond the catchy title, I found nothing I had not read before.
I was tempted to leave the book back in my bookcase, but I am not sure that is even the right place for that book.
The language is also repetitive and

More specidically, mocking non binary humans and calling people male-bodied is so 80's.
Trying not to impose a TERF agenda, by seemingly not taking sides does not make you a non transphobic person.
You are either transphobic or not.

I am now sure that whoever chose the title was genius.I realised gradually that the book was a waste of time. Not bwcausw it had nothing to say. On the contrary, there could have been more details about feminists in the workplace etc, but the author opted foa a quick fight against intersectionalists.
All in all, I want my money back

[Katie Arnott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting concept, however, I found the author’s perspective on sex work and transgender and non binary people really off putting.

The dismissive way the author refers to people defining their own identity when it doesn’t fit within their own surprisingly narrow perspective of what is acceptable also made me uncomfortable.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Helen Lewis' 'Difficult Women : A History of Feminism in 11 Fights' when I was browsing in the bookshop last week. There was only one copy in the bookshop and the book looked very fascinating and I couldn't resist getting it.

In 'Difficult Women : A History of Feminism in 11 Fights', Helen Lewis tries to gives us an unconventional history of feminism. She looks at feminism in the past 150 years through 11 different themes, or fights as she calls them. Many of the themes are familiar to us, like the right to education, the right to vote, the right to equal pay etc. But the fascinating thing about the book is this. Though Helen Lewis mentions some of the feminist pioneers, she mentions them mostly in passing. What she does is, she goes and searches for and discovers the feminists who were well known or who played important roles during their time, but who are forgotten today, either because they have complex, inconvenient histories, or they fell out with other prominent feminists and so have been written out of history, or they were not considered feminists during their time, or they have just been plain ignored. These are the difficult women that Helen Lewis writes about.

What follows is an wonderful list of amazing women and their inspiring achievements – like the footballer Lily Parr who was so famous for her football skills that she and her team used to draw crowds of 50,000 during the 1910s, Jayaben Desai who led one of the biggest worker strikes in the '70s demanding better pay and benefits, Erin Prizzey who has been written out of feminist history today but who during her time ran the first refuges in Britain for victims of domestic violence, Maureen Colquhoun the first ever lesbian MP from Britain whom everyone seems to have forgotten now, Sophia Jex-Blake who alongwith six other women fought for the right of women to pursue a medical education and inspite of the universities trying every trick to deny them that education, how she and her friends finally won and became the first female doctors in Britain – the book tells the stories of these and other amazing women. When I read what Colette Devlin – who as a 67-year old, fought for abortion rights alongside two other friends in Northern Ireland – said :

"I believe that I have a legal duty to uphold good law, but I have a moral duty to disobey bad law."

I got goosebumps.

'Difficult Women' is a beautiful, wonderful, inspiring book, which is guaranteed to make you angry and happy, and give you goosebumps. I am glad I read it.

Have you read 'Difficult Women'? What do you think about it?

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whatever your opinion on Helen Lewis, this is a book jam-packed full of histories, fights, struggles, rebels, agitators, and injustices.

It's easy to get complacent, but it wasn't that long ago that women were treated as property, unable to vote, inherit, wear trousers, work or play.

Historically they have been excluded from power and education, abused, disenfranchised, discriminated against, sometimes having no autonomy over even their own bodies. These stories need to be told, the battles of these women remembered and ongoing injustices need to be brought to light so that progress can continue.

These chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of female oppression, are engagingly written, well researched and mostly completely enraging. To be a woman in the 1910s or the 1970s must have sucked. I can only imagine how restrictive and infuriating I would have found things.

As Lewis often points out, when a breakthrough is made, it is easy to forget the struggles that came before. She does a great job of evoking what life was like for different women in different time periods.

I did find later chapters slipped further into polemic. Earlier chapters seemed to me to be more impartial and balanced: giving a more rounded view of the complexities involved in each subject. I don't know if this is a genuine reflection of the content, or if I was just in a more devil's advocatey mood later on.

Does Lewis have blindspots when it comes to certain arguments that haven't been fully explored? Maybe. Could her feminism be more inclusive? Probably. But you don't have to agree with everything someone says for them to produce a valuable work. To quote Lewis:

"There is no such thing as a flawless feminist."

Overall, this was an excellent whistle-stop tour of some of the most historically important issues in feminism. I learned about many interesting women and hope to learn about many more.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who isn't sure what all the fuss is about when it comes to feminism. It really brings it home.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘The idea of role models is not necessarily a bad one, but the way they are used in feminism can dilute a radical political movement into feel-good inspiration porn.’

A wonderfully unconventional history of feminism that rejects the static image of female revolutionaries as suffering saints.

Lewis has a sharp and witty style, and her objective is clear from the onset: championing lesser known figures, such as Marie Bonaparte (who conducted pioneering research into female sexual pleasure), Caroline Norton and Erin Pizzey, and all their complications. Whilst the early chapters are highly readable – ‘Sex’ is particularly fascinating, detailing ‘the myth of the vaginal orgasm’, hell yes – the later instalments lose their authority. Lewis’ prose strays occasionally into irrelevant anecdote and becomes increasingly saturated with fact and quotation to the point where her voice no longer guides the reader. It seems that she attempts to shoehorn in as many obscure figures as possible; so many ‘difficult women’ jostle for attention in these later chapters that Lewis ultimately loses her thread of argument. As a result, the engagement wanes exponentially; I skim-read from about the halfway mark.

It is an incredibly important argument that Lewis hopes to make here, and her intentions are honourable – but the lengthy execution lacks focus.

With thanks to the publisher for the proof copy.

[Jessy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Buch über die Geschichte vom Feminismus. Interessanter Read und die Autorin schreibt witzige Anmerkungen.

[Yoana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Стандартен либерален западен феминизъм, но имаше някои интересни разкази за по-радикални жени от миналото. Любимите са ми лесбийките сепаратистки от 70те. Страхотно е да четеш нещо скандално есктремно и да не можеш да намериш никаква логическа пробойна в аргументацията. Показва ти колко нелогични, необосновани, дори и вредни положения сме способни не само да приемем за нормални, но и да издигнем в култ и идеал, така че предложената логична, обоснована или нужна положителна промяна да изглежда като тероризъм.

Хелън Люис обаче ми се струва малко не съвсем ориентирана в някои от областите, в които навлиза книгата ѝ. Предполагам, че е неизбежно, предвид супер широкото платно, на което работи - история на феминизма в 11 извоювани или полуизвоювани права и свободи (развод, право на глас, секс, спорт, работа, безопасност, любов, образование, време, аборт и правото да не бъдеш съвършената сгодна женица). Освен това стилът ѝ изобщо не ми харесва - малко самонадеян, разхвърлян, твърде фамилиарен на моменти.

Историите на отделните жени сами по себе си са страхотно интересни; и колкото по-"трудни", тоест нелесни за преглъщане са, толкова по-интригуващи са случаите им. Например Ерин Пизи, която е отворила първото убежище за пострадали от домашно насилие жени в Англия, без да пита и да чака разрешение, просто го е открила и е започнала да приема жени, но е мразела стръвно феминистките и тогава, и сега - сега пише за човешката утайка MRAs. Едно нещо, което ги обединява, е че не са се притеснявали от неодобрението на мъжете, не им е пукало дали ще ги наричат космати, грозни, лесбийки, дали им викат, дали ще им се подиграват, дали феминизмът няма да им опетни безценната женствена репутация. При доста значителен отпор са вършили какво ли не, за да прокарат идеите си за по-голяма справедливост в обществото.

Книгата има две основни идеи: първата е да помним миналото, за да не се налага да го повтаряме. Също и защото историята на жените и техните борби редовно се изтрива, забравя или изобщо не се пише. Втората е, че не е нужно да си идеалната жена, нито идеалната феминистка, за да постигнеш нещо в борбата на жените - и да бъдеш запомнена с него. И наистина това е доста навременно в епохата на зачеркване на всеки, който не е живял безукорен живот. Точно както не е нужно да си образцова жена, за да заслужиш равни права, не е нужно да си съвършена феминистка, за да заслужиш постиженията ти да бъдат признати. Действително има нужда от връзка и диалог между полоколенията във феминизма, от по-добра информираност за миналите битки, не на последно място и за да знаем какво да очакваме от опозицията (тя няма голямо въображение, през всичките феминистки вълни тактиките и реториката на мъжкоцентричното статукво са едни и същи).

За втори път превеждам феминистки материал от западен автор на български и отново ми е малко особено - просто положението на жените не съвпада точно и много неща, които там се разбират от само себе си, тук просто не важат. Например повтарянето на breadwinner/housewife model. В България такъв модел е просъществувал за някакви си 50 години в една смехотворно малобройна прослойка. Ние дори нямаме дума за breadwinner, дотолкова непозната ни е установката 1 човек издържа цяло семейство.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such a poorly written and researched book. It claims to tell you about 11 difficult women’ but doesn’t dedicate much of each chapter to that women, leaving the reader needing to research further to learn anything useful about the subjects.

The whole point of the book makes little sense - it regularly confuses ‘difficult’ as Lewis defines it in the intro (i.e. radical campaigns for change like Jayaben Desai’s) with problematic (i.e. Marie Stopes being a literal eugenicist, which incidentally is not covered until the end of the sex chapter). This means the entire premise of the book falls down after a few chapters.

Any good points made were just regurgitated from other texts like Invisible Women and The Second Shift, leaving the only unique part of the book her irritating writing style and defence of her very questionable personal beliefs.

There are a lot of anti-sex worker and TERFy opinions scattered throughout the book, even when it is completely irrelevant to the subject of the chapter. Researching Lewis indicates that she sticks to and writes about these views a lot - I imagine the anti-sex worker/porn and TERF stances throughout the book were significantly cut by the editors so the book would have wider appeal.

Shocked that this book has such a high rating - even overlooking her questionable personal views which are presented fairly subtly through most of the book (e.g. if you don’t know anything about Bindel you wouldn’t necessarily pick up on the anti-trans viewpoint in the section where Lewis defends her) - it still has a very thrown-together, disjointed feel with no overall message that makes any sense. Glad I was able to get this from the library so as not to put any money in the pocket of a TERF.

[4cats · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult Women looks at the history of Feminism, in particular it's history in the UK, although she does cite examples from around the world. The chapters look at divorce, love, the vote, education, sex, safety, work, play, abortion, time and the right to be difficult. Lewis highlights many forgotten women who challenged society and fought to be seen as equal to their male counterparts. This is not a rose coloured view of feminism, these women had to be 'difficult' and vocal in their fight, she also accepts that although we can admire what these women achieved we also can see that they are flawed, as we all are.

As a read, this is easy to read, entertaining, inspiring and most importantly educational. It's a fascinating read, some of these pioneering women you will have heard of, others have been forgotten,
she offers insights into their personal lives as well as what drove them in their fight for change. A worthy read.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent primer on and fascinating insight into the history of feminism (UK-focused but global in reach) that I would gleefully shove into the hands of younger people in particular. I considered myself pretty across most of the topics discussed but still feel I learned a great deal, especially about lesser-known women (learning about Lily Parr, all along, was the key to getting me interested in sport!) and the infighting endemic to any struggle for progress because PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE and women have to be particularly so to get anywhere worthwhile! What a wonderful beacon this book is to embrace complexity and resist sanitising/ignoring/whitewashing the women's movement.

I tabbed so many quotes and I want to print out the 'manifesto for difficult women' at the end to keep it on me at all times. Most of all I just really appreciated Lewis’ humanising and deeply felt portraits of the thorny and glorious women involved in the fights for feminism, because they made me feel more connected to a movement I’ve been feeling alienated from lately. Also laudable is Lewis’ push for continued collective action on specific fronts, rather than getting bogged down trying to have the best and wokest brand of feminism. She puts it well: “Since we live in a deeply individualist society, debates over women’s choices… will never struggle to get airtime. In this climate, the most radical thing we can do is resist turning feminism into a referendum on [our] choices. Let’s swim against the tide by talking about what we can do together.” Throughout this book Lewis calls for a feminism that makes demands on power, rather than what she calls “feminism-lite” - the kind that would ask women ‘lean in’. Fuck that. She writes: “If feminism doesn’t frighten people with power, it is toothless.”

Lewis herself presents some difficult opinions I have no doubt some will find hard to swallow (and I wonder if at times she reigned those in so that this book would have a wider appeal). She is also very funny, especially in her footnotes. I feel more intellectually rounded and motivated for having read this, and I would recommend it to anybody seeking to understand what it really took to get to where we are today.

[Kirsty Nicolson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this book but I do think that anyone who wants to read about the history of these 11 women would do well to maybe just jot down their names from an online article about the book and read about the women online or from sources not written by someone who has such a narrow minded view on what it is to be a woman. I went into this book knowing nothing about Helen Lewis but as I read I could detect something underlying that didn't sit well with me, I was thinking something isn't right here, something in this author isn't sitting well with me. Her comments about trans people where she says something like* "I like trans people but..." was just so bad. I looked her up after reading and I was absolutely not surprised to see she is a bigot.

I love history, especially when it's the history of women, and so I enjoyed learning the women mentioned and that is why I give it two stars, but I wish I had learned about them from someone else. I hope Helen Lewis manages to get over her bigotry. I don't know whether the bigotry is her trying to be a Difficult Woman so people remember who she is and she gets attention and it's all an act, like the K*tie H*pk*ns of historical accounts of feminism.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feminism is complicated and so are the women who fight for their rights. It is rare to read a book on this subject that does not hail the movement's heroines as perfect women, that speaks about the complicated issues that dominate the movement or even dare touch the subjects of the fighting, cancelling and namecalling of feminists amongst each other. It's a subject fraught with division. I think that Helen Lewis did a great job of giving glimpses of just how complicated and complex feminism is and how far there is to go. Yes, at times, she struggles a bit to make the chapters more coherent, but sleeping on it I guess this was inevitable. I did disagree with her on certain things, but this is definitely a book that invites the opinion of others to the table. It was the first book on this subject in a long time that told me things I had not heard about before and where I felt that one can be a complex woman and still have a place at the feminist table. As a very clever friend of mine once said: "You will get more things wrong in life than right, but the things you get right will make all the difference."

[Alejandra Elizondo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terfy and surface level. Talks about intersectionality, but does not seem to actually apply it very well above the most rudimentary level.
The women in the essays are mainly fascinating women, but there are better books about most of them.

[Ginny Darke · Rating 2 out of 5]

the terf energy is astounding !!!!!!!!!! no thx

[Jan ☀️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helen Lewis’ Difficult Women tells the story of feminism in eleven different battles that helped English women regain at least some of the rights stolen from them by men. Lewis emphasizes that she learned to avoid the narratives of the majority of writers and journalists who only focus on the successes of the feminist movement, or, as she puts it:

“Women’s history should not be a shallow hunt for heroines.
[there is a] desperate desire to pretend that thorny issues are actually straightforward. No more flawed humans struggling inside vast, complicated systems: there are good guys and bad guys, and it’s easy to tell which is which.
This approach is pathetic and childish, and it should be resisted. I want to restore the complexity to feminist pioneers. Their legacies might be contested, they might have made terrible strategic choices and they might not have lived up to the ideals they preached. But they mattered. Their difficulty is part of the story.”

In my review, I will address each issue individually, using some notes I made while reading, but mostly I will quote some well-written phrases about the different subjects.

Divorce:


For the first time, I learned the story of Caroline Norton, an author and an activist—although such a term didn’t exist at the time. Caroline Norton was one of the first women in modern history to experience a “sex-related shitstorm” from the Victorian yellow press, which accused her of adultery. At the time, if adultery was proven it meant for the wife that she is going to be separated but not divorced from her husband, which meant he still had legal power over her as if they were still together. After marriage, a woman gave all her civil rights to her husband and could only regain them through divorce, but not through separation. A man could divorce his wife whenever he wanted, but a woman could only enforce a divorce if she could prove her husband had an incestuous relationship. Norton gave English women the right to see their children after divorce for the first time in history. Keep in mind, we are talking about the late 19th century.

Vote:


The author speaks about Hannah Mitchell, an English suffragette who was a member of the WSPU, which fought for voting rights for women in the early 20th century.
“No cause can be won between dinner and tea, and most of us who were married had to work with one hand tied behind us,” wrote suffragette Hannah Mitchell in her memoir. She explains:
“Looking back on my own life, I feel my greatest enemy has been the cooking stove - a sort of tyrant who has kept me in subjection.”

Sex:


In this chapter, the story of Marie Bonaparte is told. She was, by the way, the great-great-niece of Napoleon Bonaparte and a patient of Sigmund Freud. She had once been caught masturbating by her nurse, who told her that the practice would kill her and made her wear a nightgown with drawstrings at the bottom. Banned from studying for the baccalaureate because she was a girl, Marie spent the rest of her life conducting independent research into sexuality. One of her subjects was herself. Having given up clitoral masturbation, she discovered that she couldn’t orgasm from sex in the missionary position. She was one of the first female scientists to research female sexuality and understood that the social perception of sex as the act of inserting a penis into a vagina was only based on male needs. Ernst Gräfenberg, the discoverer of the clitoris, provided the first data showing that it is about 4.5 cm away from the vaginal canal, making it very difficult for women to reach orgasm through missionary sex. The author highlights how the words we use to describe sex expose that we are blindly using the male perspective, with sex defined as penetration, while everything else—what women often prefer—is dismissed as mere “foreplay.” This framing reveals that clitoral stimulation is not intended to satisfy women but only to arouse them enough to participate in penetration, leaving them aroused yet unsatisfied overall.

Play:


At the beginning of this chapter, the author digresses to underline her perspective that the feminist story should be told with all its good and bad sides. As an example, she discusses a known feminist, Margaret Sanger, who was one of the leaders of the birth control revolution but also a big advocate of eugenics, believing that birth control was necessary to reduce the fertility of some unwanted ethnic groups.
The author says:
“We cannot deny the unpalatable views of Stopes and fellow birth-control advocates such as Margaret Sanger. But we can put them in context. What they believed has nothing to do with the modern reproductive justice movement. The organisation which now bears Marie’s name was founded in 1976, after her own clinics folded a year earlier. The battle started by Marie Stopes continues today. How much did her difficulty contribute to her achievements? She got contraception and female sexual desire discussed at the tea-tables of polite English society. In 1923, she brought a libel case against an obscure Catholic doctor who accused her of obscenity, and the resulting publicity saw birth control mentioned in the same newspapers which had refused to take adverts for her clinics. Her legal costs were considerable, but attendance at her clinics rose. Like the suffragettes, she had discovered that being thunderously condemned was better than being politely ignored.”

The author then returns to the history of women’s football and shows how World War I accelerated public interest in women’s football, as men were overseas fighting. I was shocked to learn about the ban in 1921. The explanation was striking, as it came from the FA—an organisation now criticised by football fans for being “too woke.” On December 5, 1921, the FA announced a ban on women’s football from being played at professional grounds and pitches affiliated with the FA, stating, “The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.”

Work:


In this chapter, Lewis addresses the various problems every woman still faces in the workplace even today, which prevent them from reaching their full potential.

Safety:


For me, this was perhaps the most interesting chapter of the book, in which the author interviewed Erin Pizzey, the founder of the first and largest domestic violence shelter in the world. Pizzey later became a “men’s rights advocate,” as if men are systematically oppressed by women. She also collaborates with far-right influencers and anti-feminists, which is an interesting evolution that the author analyzes. Returning to the shelters, Pizzey describes why it is so difficult for women to escape their abusive partners:

“Pizzey observed that women who ‘escaped’ struggled to live independently. ‘I often used to joke that the first day a woman came into the refuge she was on a high because she was safe and so were her children,’ she writes in her memoir. ‘The second day she was busy getting their lives organised, but by the third day I would notice that the high had dissipated. That was the day she was most likely to think about going back to her partner.’”

Lewis also addresses a general problem of liberal movements: rivalries and the illusion among some leftists that being “woke” is a competition, where one can only outshine an “ally” by being more progressive and, therefore, a better person. This, among other issues, is one of the biggest problems of liberal movements, which shatters the unity of their supporters. Other problems include blindly adopting identity politics, which creates the illusion that every perspective from a minority must be uncritically accepted.

Lewis writes:
“Freeman, like Pizzey, had her negative experiences in real-world collectives. The online feminism of the 2010s added a new dimension, because it was possible to be the target of a trashing by several hundred people at once, in real time. ‘Even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic,’ the American journalist Michelle Goldberg wrote in the Nation in 2014. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it—not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists.

Online feminism became obsessed with language. A kind of priesthood had sprung up to adjudicate what terms could be used.
Anger is a great engine of change, and activists are often dismissed by those who currently hold power as ‘too radical’ or ‘too aggressive’ in their demands. But outrage had become prized for its own sake, and online feminists had lost the ability to distinguish between genuine anger and mere spite. Worse, self-appointed ‘allies’ had gone full Crucible by performatively denouncing their peers to demonstrate their own righteousness. ‘What’s disgusting and disturbing to me is that I see some of the more intellectually dishonest arguments put forth by women of color being legitimized and performed by white feminists, who seem to be in some sort of competition to exhibit how intersectional they are,’ the Jezebel blog founder Anna Holmes, who is black, told Michelle Goldberg. She found it ‘dishonest’ and ‘patronising.’”

For Lewis, these disagreements are not a justification for people like Pizzey to join radical anti-feminist groups. However, she underlines the importance of understanding why people like Pizzey think the way they do, perhaps to prevent them from falling into the arms of reactionary politicians.

Love:


The author speaks about non-heterosexual relationships and the sexism that exists there as well. However, she first addresses a significant problem: the pseudo-leftist, liberal nonsense of upper-class academics who are only interested in symbolic activism that doesn’t force them to share their power or resources.

Lewis explains:
“Think of the current craze for ‘woke-washing,’ where businesses plaster themselves with ‘LGBT-friendly employer’ kitemarks, hold training days about diversity, and encourage people to put their pronouns in their email signatures. It’s great, but it changes very little. Recently, I went into a tech company which had signs on the loos proclaiming that anyone who self-identified as a woman could use the ladies. ‘Gender diversity is welcome here,’ the sign added. A lovely thought. Except I was visiting the tech company to talk about the systematic sexist abuse of women on its platform. Talk is cheap, action is expensive: it’s why the suffragette slogan was ‘deeds not words.’

My corporate dudes, come back to me when you’ve funded generous parental-leave packages or ensured that those asking for flexible working hours aren’t underpaid and overlooked for promotions. You can have your pink kitemark when half your board and senior management team are women, when your office has a free crèche, and when harassment claims are properly investigated rather than hushed up with non-disclosure agreements.”


Another phrase that made me smile was the author’s response to the question of whether it is homophobic to not be attracted to trans men or trans women:
“Of course, many non-trans lesbians do consider trans women as potential sexual partners. But it is fine not to do so, either.
Your vagina is not a democracy. No one else gets a vote on what you do with it.”

Education:

This chapter recounts the story of the Edinburgh Seven, the first women to be full undergraduate students at any British university. For me, it is unimaginable that some people once believed women were not capable of being good doctors. As a medical student myself, at a faculty where at least 60% of the students are women, I can see they are often clearly more qualified than I am. Women are much better represented in medicine nowadays that some universities have even actively worked against their academic success.

“Examiners at Tokyo Medical University in Japan admitted that they had deducted points from the test scores of female applicants for many years. They wanted to limit the numbers of women doctors, reasoning that it would harm the country’s health service if it was staffed by too many people who might leave to have babies. They apparently hadn’t considered that a) doctors’ future lives were none of their business; and b) making it easier for mothers to stay in the profession was also possible. The next year, when the handicapping system was removed, female applicants outperformed male ones.”

Time:


This was one of the weaker chapters, in my opinion. Here, the author discusses how women, who often juggle two roles, are forced to work twice as hard to achieve the same results as men due to the lack of time. While the subject is important, Lewis’ treatment of it felt superficial.

Abortion:


Although abortion rights are relatively prominent in the news due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I think the story of Savita Halappanavar is not told often enough. It vividly illustrates the necessity of universal abortion rights:
“In 2012, a thirty-one-year-old dentist called Savita Halappanavar had the misfortune to start miscarrying at seventeen weeks pregnant. She arrived at University Hospital Galway with the foetus half-delivered, and the sac protruding from her uterus into her vagina. She asked for an abortion and was refused one. Nothing could be done, doctors said, until the heartbeat had stopped. One of the nurses told her and her husband that Ireland was ‘a Catholic country.’

Three days later, as Savita’s condition worsened, the medical team eventually diagnosed her with sepsis—blood poisoning—and agreed to give her the abortion drug misoprostol. She delivered the foetus before the drug could be administered. At 1:09 a.m., four days later, she died of a heart attack caused by the blood poisoning. In her statement to the Northern Ireland police, Colette Devlin described the decision to refuse treatment to Halappanavar as ‘tantamount to murder.’”

Difficult Women:


In the final chapter, the author emphasizes the importance of being a “difficult” woman who confronts sexism wherever it exists. The author emphasise that it is not the time for women to actively ignore reasons for the discrimination because it could be seen as lack of solidarity with other oppressed groups.

“In Japan, women are still expected to give up work when they have children. In El Salvador, women are jailed for having miscarriages. In rural Nepal, women die in freezing cold ‘menstrual huts.’ In Britain, our main opposition party has never had a woman leader. Across the world, women own less capital, earn lower wages, and do more unpaid caring labour. You will notice how many of these disadvantages relate to having a female body. That has become an unfashionable concept among younger feminists, who are wary of making arguments based on biology. They worry about being ‘exclusionary’ because not all women have a uterus or vagina or about ‘reducing women to genitals.’

But come on—feminists have fought hard to stop our bodies from being unspeakable. We’ve tried to bust the taboos against talking about menstruation, menopause, or the gorier bits of childbirth. Are we really going to tidy all that away again? We can welcome transgender people into feminism without junking the idea that biology matters. I don’t believe I have a ‘female brain’—good at sewing, bad at starting wars—but I do have a female body. And as a class, women are oppressed because it is presumed that they can bear children. That still applies even though many of us—like me—are childless. The principle of self-definition should be respected, but it does not cancel out material reality. An episiotomy doesn’t care how you identify.”


Final Thoughts:

All in all, I greatly “enjoyed” reading this book. It was enlightening to learn about the different aspects of the feminist movement, especially the darker sides of certain movements and figures. As the author aptly pointed out, it is essential to highlight these imperfections because they underline how flawed and human every social movement can be.

I highly recommend this book—5/5!

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a Big Fan of Helen Lewis. I've read her writing for the New Statesman for years, listened to her on the NS podcast, and have seen her speak publicly twice (including an event for the release of this book). So it's no surprise I thought this was great. But I did.

As the name says, it's a history of feminism through 11 'fights'. Some of these are what you'd expect - fundamental rights to vote, get divorced, equal pay, abortion. And some of them are a little less prominent in our collective history - the right to safety (at women's refuge centres, set up in the 1970s), lesbian-specific discrimination, university places for women and the understanding of female orgasms.

The narrative of 'Difficult Women' is also really interesting. She looks at pioneers of the women's movement that have since had key aspects of their politics erased, or simply been ignored, because they don't conform well to modern politics. For example, the Pankhursts are well known now. But how many people know that their tactics would arguably be described as terrorist-like in the modern era? Who knows about the woman who set up the British refuge centres, Erin Pizzey - could it be because she rejected contemporary mainstream politics of 1970s feminism, and now associates with men's rights activists? The first openly gay MP is often quoted as Chris Smith, but what about Maureen Colquhoon, who was outed 9 years earlier - how many prominent lesbians are there in British history?

The structure of the book in these 11 chapters is great, so you can read one evening about Jayaben Desai leading a British Asian women's strike in the 1970s (who knew?), and then pop off to sleep and learn about something completely different the next night.

Fascinating and different.

4.7 / 5

[Claire (Book Blog Bird) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a great book. I 'read' it on audiobook and it was narrated by the author, which I think really made it.

Throughout history, feminism has been fought by difficult women. Difficult in the sense that they have been awkward and annoying (according to the patriarchy) in order to achieve their aims because when you're fighting for a cause, you don't really get anywhere by being liked. People like the status quo - it's comforting, even if you're not really benefiting from it - and when someone tries to change it, a lot of people get upset.

The women Helen Lewis focuses on are also have also been difficult to like by fellow feminists. Lewis makes a really salient point in this book, in that one cause cannot hope to speak for 3.5 billion people. My experience of the world, as a woman, is going to be totally different from how a disabled, black woman experiences it and what I need from feminism will be different too. There's no one single aim in feminism, but there is crossover with fights for equal rights for other marginalised groups. She also points out areas where feminism has clashed with fights for other rights (e.g. transgender rights).

Although the chapters each focus on are different aspects of the feminist movement (time, abortion, sex etc) I'd never heard of most of the women mentioned. I now want to go out and find out more about them!

Lewis's writing style reminded me of that of Caitlin Moran and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - intelligent and incisive and approachable.

Have the women in Lewis's book been effective? Undoubtedly, yes. Are they nice people? Not always, no. Feminism isn't about being nice, though. That's the point. It's an imperfect fight for the right to be imperfect.