The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis

I didn't read Kipnis' earlier book, Against Love, but I know her as a polemicist. So I was not surprised that she doesn't really hold back too many punches in The Female Thing. That is not to say that these literary punches aren't warranted or even, frankly, unusual--a third wave feminist critiquing Andrea Dworkin and Naomi Wolf? No!

However, Kipnis can be a bit flip about some of her subjects, like say, sex with minors. (Sorry, I thought it was part of the social contract that adult women should refrain from fucking 12 year old boys. I managed to do so my whole life and plan on going to the grave without indulging. And there is a very clear difference between a professor having an affair her/his 18+ student and an adult fucking a pre-teen.) And she leads us down some interesting paths, but then blocks the path with a joke, rather than insight. The book is, in her words, "an account of the female psyche at the twenty-first century mark..." (vii) and, true to form, is sometimes meandering, interesting, exhausting, and judgmental. It is The Feminine Mystique for femininity that is no longer only tied to family and home. But the thing is, although Kipnis does focus on the female psyche, there are hints at this being a much bigger "thing," that men are experiencing, say, dissatisfaction, and that it's not just about gender roles:

"Living in a society so cavalier about the basic needs of the majority does create a certain amount of emotional fallout. If only the polity of complaining women and fleeing men were issuing more ultimatums about the deteriorating conditions of collective social life, instead of confining them to the insufficiencies of the opposite sex." (33)

Word.

But is Kipnis' "female thing" or "thing about being female" my thing? Weeelll...kinda. Obviously every pysche is different (like snowflakes), but there are overarching cultural similarities. I definitely feel like I am missing "something" from my life (a state to which Kipnis assigns women), but I also fear being trapped--by a job, a family, a home (a state to which Kipnis assigns men). I am constantly upset by my partner's "dirtiness" and inattention to housewifery (mine and his), but my standards are much lower than my mother's and I am pretty happy in my dirty home. Am I sexually disatisfied? Can be. Whose fault is it? Mine, for not speaking up. And I am very nervous about vulnerability, but Kipnis does not mention the non-political pleasure of being vulnerable--being with someone you trust not to judge your for your vague jealousies, filthiness, and unassertiveness.