Struggled with the lack of nuance

The author excuses inappropriate behaviours such that they should not draw conflict let alone be considered abusive however lacks the nuance to address the ongoing impacts of objectifying or demeaning behaviours - the author does not qualify the impact they do have which may not be considered 'abusive' but would help to discern why they become confused and conflated. I was very disappointed by this book. The author uses a weird set of anecdotal examples to try to illustrate non abusive behaviour as if they present a reasonable baseline, however, these examples are still yuck or reductive and demeaning, yet this is never acknowledged, there's no self awareness.

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Controversial examples don’t make sense

I only got half way through this. I found the examples very problematic in relation to power dynamics in workplaces and whether a supervisor or professor should have a relationship with a student. Not just this example though.
There was one Schulman gives of her own account of being attracted to a coworker during a work lunch or dinner and she starts objectifying her.

And there were other examples about consent that were questioning a woman’s believability in relation to sexual assault.

Of course, a minority of women make false claims, I don’t deny that. But as a recent ‘survivor’ of date rape, it is so important that women are believed. I never reported my experience and many of my friends have never reported theirs.

Now that we see all these cases of women, men and non binary people in the army not reporting out of fear for their lives, those few cases that weren’t true shouldn’t be given the attention they do, compared to the constant violence women and others face.

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4 people found this helpful