Thursday, 6 August 2009

Fire With Fire

I'm always reading at least one book at any given time. At the moment, I'm reading Naomi Wolf's Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the 21st Century. As the inside cover puts it:

"Why, asks Naomi Wolf, has feminism become a dirty word, even among women? A chasm has opened up between the feminist movement and the lives of most women. Feminist orthodoxy is out of touch with the real world. In this passionate and incisive new book, the author of The Beauty Myth calls for a new kind of feminism and new female attitudes to power."

I've been a feminist for a long time, but I've only just started exploring feminism as a community and a political entity, particularly on the blogosphere. One thing I have gathered is that Naomi Wolf isn't always popular among her fellow feminists. So her claims that feminism needs to move away from a victim mentality and claim the power of capitalism and government - and that we only have ourselves to blame if we don't - undoubtedly raises some hackles.