Living a Feminist Life

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You are in being assigned x or y also being assigned to a group; an assignment is what you receive from others that will determine how you are positioned in relation to others.

It is why, when I hear my feminist sister lost in a sea of despair I slide Living a Feminist Life to my comrade and suggest: “You need to read this book”. There is something organic in her approach, drawing from her experiences as a woman, as a woman of color, as a queer woman of color. After participating in that panel, and also some classes which appealed to Ahmed’s work, I thought it would be useful to read something by Ahmed. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here.This is a book that feminists will find illuminating—acutely painful at times, but mostly profoundly insightful. You are learning, too, to accept that potential for violence as imminent, and to manage yourself as a way of managing the consequences. Much of it is about reactions to feminists speaking up in private or public spaces, and how words (such as "killjoy") are used against feminists and how they can be retaken. The second part of the text is particularly significant, as it focuses on how diversity can be a more ‘palatable’ word for racism and sexism, as well as the role of diversity workers within universities. The violence of judgments that tend to follow violence against women and girls has been documented by feminists over generations.

While Ahmed's writing can get a little wordy or repetitive at times, her insights more than make up for slight verbosity.

The denigration of female professors, particularly those of colour, is illustrated through various anecdotes. Over time, with experience, you sense that something is wrong or you have a feeling of being wronged. To be a feminist, then, is to be a killjoy: someone willing to speak up against sexism, racism, ableism, transphobia, etc. With its title evoking both the ‘improving’ literature of the nineteenth century and the ‘self-help’ industry of the current era, the distance between those genre and Sara Ahmed’s impressive and important Living a Feminist Life is belied by its big hitting academic publisher…. Even when we critique the sex-gender distinction, even when we learn from feminist critiques of this distinction (Gatens 1983; Butler 1990), we know that that distinction works as a form of sequencing: as if from sex, gender follows.

Being estranged from one’s own life can be how a world reappears, becoming odd…to become conscious of possibility can involve mourning for its loss” (Ahmed, page 47). Feminism helps you to make sense that something is wrong; to recognize a wrong is to realize that you are not in the wrong. From this everyday situation of living with the consequences of not making happiness your cause, you learn the unhappiness that happiness can cause. I didn’t like the idea that she put forward of feminists (be the feminist women, men, trans, other races, disabled) constantly snapping at each other.There is a distinct hope and optimism for the future of diversity work – but still a demand for better. While I did not agree with everything the author says, I can respect the well documented concise intensity in which she says it. And think about feeling: to direct your attention to the experience of being wronged can mean feeling wronged all over again. Not to think like a feminist, but what it is like to stand up to people who are screaming for you to be silenced.