The feminists Crispin reveres are the radicals currently out of favor—Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone—and “our great weirdos,” the true individualists like Emily Dickinson and Simone Weil, who reimagined society in difficult and intriguing ways—and made people uncomfortable in the process. Feminism now, Crispin passionately argues, is all too comfortable. It’s too firmly invested in the consumer culture to break out of it and create something else. Feminism has become a lifestyle, not a world-changer—it’s just “another thing to buy.” And what it buys into is the same old patriarchal culture whose values of money and power are also successful women’s markers of achievement. But what, Crispin asks, is all that “empowerment” and “girl power” for? She wants feminism to be about more than self-help. Whether or not you agree with her on every point, Crispin’s blunt, uncompromising manifesto is just the kind of galvanizing call-to-action we need right now.
