Woman

January 3, 2022
In this immersive history, LGBTQ scholar Faderman (Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death) charts changes in America’s “ideal of womanhood” from the 17th century to the present. Characterizing women’s progress as a pendulum that advances during historical moments such as WWII, when women’s work outside the home was desperately needed, only to swing back during economic downturns and periods of social “destabilization,” Faderman profiles rebels and their detractors. Along the way, she spotlights 19th-century female antislavery societies in the North, sexually liberated “New Women” of the 1910s and ’20s, 1990s riot grrls, and modern-day celebrities who galvanized the #MeToo movement. In each historical period, Faderman pays close attention to groups often excluded from histories of the campaign for gender equality, including Black and Indigenous women and working-class white women like Clara Lemlich, leader of a massive 1909 garment workers’ strike in New York City. Turning to the 21st century, Faderman discusses the “opt-out revolution” in the early 2000s, which argued that “most women did not want the prizes for which feminists had fought,” and analyzes debates over sexual consent and women’s credibility, but gives somewhat short shrift to the surging interest in gender nonconformity among Generation Z . Still, this is a comprehensive and lucid overview of the ongoing campaign to free women from “the tyranny of old notions.” Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary.

Starred review from February 1, 2022
The distinguished feminist historian analyzes how the concept of woman has evolved over almost 500 years of American history. Woman, Faderman argues, is a patriarchal concept with roots that run deep. Even the most liberal views of (White) womanhood, such as those of 17th-century Puritan minister Roger Williams, centered around woman as the "weaker Vessel...more fitted to keep and order the House and Children." Wealthy women, especially widows, had slightly more agency, but a woman's place, then and in the centuries that followed, was in the home. As the states expanded into Native American land, that idea was forced on Native women throughout the territories. At the same time, enslaved women suffered both race and gender marginalization that, as Angela Davis noted, "annulled" their womanhood. By the 19th century, women transformed the chains that bound them to woman into what Faderman calls the "visas" that took them out of the home and allowed them to "claim a voice in the public square." Yet even as females--largely middle-class and White--gained greater access to public life in the 20th century, patriarchy, in the guise of medical science, denounced independent-minded women for violating gender norms. By the 1980s, Faderman engagingly demonstrates, thinkers like the radical lesbian feminist Monique Wittig called woman a dangerous patriarchal "myth" and helped liberate the concept of gender--and gender-prescribed behaviors--from sexuality. Faderman ably brings the discussion into the 21st century and the present day, when nonbinary conceptions of gender are gaining further acceptance in the mainstream even as the resolutely patriarchal system--perfectly embodied by Donald Trump and his cohorts--continues to fight against anything other than a strictly binary gender structure. This highly readable, inclusive, and deeply researched book will appeal to scholars of women and gender studies as well as anyone seeking to understand the historical patterns that misogyny has etched across every era of American culture. An intelligently provocative, vital reading experience.

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