The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Three years after her controversial proadultery polemic, Against Love, Kipnis, a professor of media studies at Northwestern University, offers a wide-ranging and equally unorthodox investigation of "the female condition." She examines why women want both power and push-up bras, have fewer orgasms than men, why spouses have a harder time staying connected to each other after the wife quits work to stay home with the kids and why feminists keep focusing on rape, even though rates of female rapes are down while the rape of imprisoned men has escalated. Underlying the failure of feminism to achieve full equality for women, Kipnis says, is women's own ambivalence: they want feminism as well as femininity. Some of Kipnis's avenues of inquiry are well trod—Katha Pollitt, for example, has deconstructed the "opt-out revolution," whose foot soldiers are Ivy League–credentialed moms who trade high-powered careers for full-time motherhood, and Naomi Wolf long ago tackled the cosmetics industry. Countless critics have wondered why feminism was so easily co-opted by a market economy in which everyone works longer hours than they used to. Though not totally fresh, this fluid, sassy volume is guaranteed to electrify media and cocktail party circuits. (Oct. 17)
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From Booklist

At its core, the female psyche vis-a-vis its male counterpart fixates on four things: dirt, sex, envy, and vulnerability. No matter what else goes on in the time-honored battle of the sexes, the essential conflict can eventually find its way back to one of these areas. Distilling such gender issues into a tight discourse on the paradoxical stalemate of tradition versus progress in male-female relations, Kipnis offers a measured declamation on where the women's movement is headed--and where it has veered off course. Equal pay, equal pleasure, equal cleanliness, equal confidence: where gender parity is concerned, incongruities arise "like ingrown hairs after a bad bikini wax," claims Kipnis. Ambivalence abounds while activism idles, and who's to blame? Droll one minute, deadly serious the next, Kipnis is just as apt to point a well-manicured finger at women for social inertia as she is at men. Incisive, engrossing, controversial, and circumspect, Kipnis offers a trenchant examination of the political and personal state of contemporary feminism. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; First Edition edition (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375424172
• ISBN-13: 978-0375424175
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #602,831 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dirt, Sex, Envy, or Vulnerability... Kipnis explores (western) female identity, October 22, 2006

By	Robert Schmidt (Honolulu, HI & Logan, UT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Well, that "Female Thing." Does it lead to backlash or ambivalence? Feminism or femininity? What is the "inner woman"?

In this book, The Female Thing, Kipnis explores what it is like to be a women (in western culture, and particularly in the US) in today's society. Have "we've come a long way, baby?" Or, as Linda Hirshman claims in Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, are women continuing to miss the boat?

Kipnis more or less issues a report card here: where are women now in regards to social status and equality? My interpretation of her analysis is that the report card would be a "C-".

She looks at 4 primary issues that she calls Envy, Sex, Dirt, and Vulnerability.

Envy: "If you're a modern female, unfortunately something's always broken" (p. 9). Women are obsessed, for complex reasons, about their "imperfections." [Note: read I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron for an example of this.] Kipnis summarizes this concept in her phrase "...voluntary servitude to self-improvement" (p. 10). There is a huge focus on looks instead of health, by the way. This commands women's attention to the detriment of other issues in their lives.

Sex: Suffice it to say that women are told they don't need it, or they deserve more, or there are tricks of the trade that are either hidden from them or that fool them, or something! To borrow a title from Star Trek IV, sex for many women is "The Undiscovered Country."

Dirt: Your various "apertures" make you vulnerable to nasty things in life. Women in many societies take the major role in managing dirt (internal and external). "Needless to say, being in charge of all the dirt has not made women particularly jovial" (p. 91).

Vulnerability; Kipnis' bottom line is that the "custodianship of a vagina really is the female Achilles' heel..." (p. 124). She discusses whether female anatomy is fundamentally vulnerable and perhaps "overvalued". Rape is the quintessential vulnerability, and she discusses the effects of sexual trauma (for example, experiences of Andrea Dworkin) in detail.

And then the book ends! I really was expecting a concluding synthesis at the end of these four sections.

All in all, this was a well-written, interesting discussion of the plight of many women in search of their various identities... as individuals, as members of family groups, and in societies. It is not a discussion of all the plights, nor all the opportunities. However, Kipnis focuses on the cages surrounding "free women." I expect this book will be an interesting one to discuss in your local book club.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The conflicted female psyche (3.75 *s), November 22, 2006

By	J. Grattan "book reviewer" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

THE FEMALE THING is an irreverent look at the conflicted and contradictory female "thing" - that is, the female psyche. Achieving equality with and independence from the male of the species has been the goal for feminists for the last forty years, and while somewhat achieved, there is a sense of dissatisfaction, of things missing.

At least for heterosexual women, men do have something that women want - the possibilities of love, etc. Apparently those needs have driven a tremendous consumption of advice and self-enhancing products and procedures, even among the most ardent feminists. Self-acceptance seems to be in short supply.

Attaining financial independence by entering the workforce also has its problems: the loss of time and being subject to the rules of workplace regimes. Now in the name of empowerment, some younger women are opting for child-rearing - eschewing careers. The drive for equality and independence is indeed taking strange directions.

Women are also conflicted over the nature of sex. According to the author the location of orgasmatic centers and the assignment of technical responsibility for achieving such is engendering debate among frustrated women. And then there's dirt. Women have been in charge of dirt ever since the rise of domesticity and men are generally oblivious. But the female anatomy itself has, through the centuries, been considered "dirty" by some elements creating no small amount of consternation even today.

The author also considers the hysteria that can surround even the potential for rape, while acknowledging female vulnerabilities. She strongly questions a couple of well known feminists who have either forgotten their complicity in unwelcome advances or fabricated the same.

Kipnis' appraisal of the female psyche, actually female sexuality, is intended to be provocative. Her writing is difficult, at times, to follow - just as in her other recent book, Against Love. But it's worth the effort. She forces a re-examination of issues that many may have thought to be settled.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a real conversation starter..., October 15, 2007

By	armchairinterviews.com (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This book is a valuable attempt to summarize the state of "the female psyche...in the aftermath of second-wave feminism and partway to gender equality." After a brief preface, Kipnis explores the paradox of female compliance/complicity existing simultaneously with feminism's demands for equality. This exploration unfolds within four chapters, which compose what Kipnis calls "a catalog of fetters, a chronicle of impasses."

Holding a professorship in media studies at Northwestern University, Laura Kipnis is known for her aggressive humor and honesty regarding gender issues. Some reviewers, perhaps most notably Alexandra Jacobs in the New York Times, have criticized this book for its brevity and lack of theoretical density, but these critics are imposing inapplicable standards of judgment. An earlier book--Against Love: A Polemic--offers a way to understand Kipnis' intention in this new book. She is less interested in constructing an air-tight logical case than in using selective logic to reveal the ambivalence and indecision that many women feel about "the female situation."

The chapter entitled "Envy" offers a hilarious parody of the cult of femininity while still challenging the tendency to focus all female disappointments on men (as the scapegoats) and raising the possibility that feminism inadvertently aided "scorched-earth labor practices." In "Sex," Kipnis explores some willingly forgotten realities about the history of medicine (e.g., genital massage as a treatment for unhappy/depressed women). In "Dirt," she shows how the cult of domesticity coupled with the association of home-and-body cleanliness with virtue traps women (and men) in a no-win situation.

"Vulnerability," the last and most controversial chapter, walks an argumentative tightrope. Kipnis argues persuasively that living with the constant awareness of rape inevitably shapes female behavior and psychology. On the other hand, she examines whether female victimization rhetoric is blinding many people to the possibility that "as many men as women are probably raped every year in the United States, and possibly more." As Kipnis writes, "Okay, most of these men are incarcerated at the time--but it's still rape."

Armchair Interviews says: This book offers a provocative introduction to the debates percolating in many households and classrooms.