All We Want Is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy

In this nimble account, activist and journalist Chemaly (Rage Becomes Her) pushes back on trad wives and other such trendy efforts to re-entrench traditional gender roles. The reestablishment of such roles “extend[s] far beyond intimate relationships, influencing personal interactions in public,” and thus endangers gains made in women’s rights, she argues. Beginning with an analysis of the home that expands outwards into schools, work, medical care, politics, and culture, Chemaly presents a trenchant critique of both men’s obliviousness about the privileges that masculinity confers (“Brothers and sisters can walk down a street together for years and have completely different experiences”) as well as of male fragility, or men’s negative emotional reaction to women’s successes (she points to a statistic showing men’s stress levels rise when women make more than 40% of a household’s income). She argues that society’s antifeminist backlash is firmly rooted in male emotionality, as men who haven’t moved beyond heteronormative gender roles feel resentment over remaining “existentially tethered to women as extensions of themselves” in ways women are no longer tethered to them. Elsewhere, she accuses the right-wing promoters of “trad” culture of being duplicitous in their efforts to paint it as unrelated to broader political life (she highlights the growing crackdown on women’s reproductive rights to emphasize the seriousness of the political moment). It’s a potent rallying cry for a beleaguered feminist movement. (Nov.)