I wasn’t initially that interested in reading this book, but I found I really enjoyed reading it. I learned quite a bit of history and appreciated Traister’s expert ability to distill explanations of the way sexist double standards function in politics and society. I’ve heard this from other reviewers and I want to echo the sentiment that Traister seems to do a good job talking about race. She credits black women who’ve been leaders in fights for civil rights, and I thought her explanation of how white women rely on and as a result seek to uphold the white hetero patriarchy to be very insightful.

It seemed to me to be a miss that Traister never discussed our culture’s oppressive gender binary itself. Trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming folks are often our most vulnerable population, and to talk only about how the patriarchy disenfranchises women without mentioning this group was a weakness in this book for me. You can argue that delving into gender in this fashion was not the target of this book, but I think that with the increase in visibility of non-binary and gender nonconforming people, it will become (hopefully) impossible to write a book that discusses women like this book does without at least mentioning the existence of people who are not women or men.