March 1, 1999
Distressed that women of her generation tend to dissociate themselves from the feminist movement, 27-year-old Denfeld asserts that older feminists themselves are to blame for this state of affairs. By adopting what she calls repressive sexual politics and a victim mentality that harken back to Victorian notions of femininity, today's feminist leaders, argues Denfeld, alienate younger women who perceive themselves to be more liberated and more empowered than current feminist dogma allows. Denfeld may have a point about the generation gap she identifies, but her tone is so unremittingly spiteful that it's hard to believe her claim that she wants to rescue the movement through constructive critique. Her analysis of the work of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin-her two chief bogeywomen-is grossly reductive, and her ``Victorian'' analogy is clumsily handled and largely irrelevant. If Denfeld is right that feminism is in a state of crisis, her carping is unlikely to improve the movement's health. Author tour.
November 1, 1994
This critique of traditional feminism comes at the right time, given the recent success-in terms of book sales-of "new" feminists Camille Paglia (Sex, Art, and American Culture, LJ 10/1/92) and Kate Roiphe (The Morning After, LJ 9/15/93).
March 1, 1995
Just how is feminism currently defined and what is its meaning to the women--especially younger women--of today? Denfeld challenges the often disturbing and generally extremist nature of contemporary feminism by examining many issues being batted about by leading theorists. Key themes are debated; these include the antipornography activists' attacks on feminists who are against censorship in any form, the relevance of goddess worship, the trend in current dogma to condemn women's strides toward sexual liberation, and the tendency to inflate statistics that perpetrate a view of nearly all women as being victimized by men. Denfeld is neither conservative nor reactionary. Her observations are clear-sighted appraisals of how the movement alienates the great majority of women. She concludes with a treatise on reclaiming feminism, setting forth ideas on working toward meaningful change in such areas as child care, abortion rights, and sexual violence. ((Reviewed Mar. 1, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)
November 4, 1996
Arguing that contemporary feminism has bogged down in an often repressive extremism, Denfeld contends that her generation needs to reframe the movement along more tolerant lines.
February 15, 1995
Books in which young women bash the feminism of their mothers' generation have become something of a growth industry of late: Katie Roiphe's The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus (LJ 9/15/93) and Christina Hoff Summers's Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women (LJ 6/15/94) come immediately to mind. This latest contribution to the genre, by a freelance writer and amateur boxer, argues that while many under-30s women believe in (and desperately need) feminist causes, they have been alienated by the radical goddess-worshipping wierdos who (she maintains) now dominate the women's movement. The thesis that feminism is in danger of dissipating its once-vital energies in a neosocial purity campaign has been much elaborated on elsewhere, but here it is undermined by a host of contradictions, a reliance on pop-culture sources such as Glamour magazine, and an unfortunate tendency to generalize from carefully selected tidbits of evidence. There is a place for this sort of thing, but it is only in large popular collections, where there is certain to be some demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/94.]-Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.