Geography is about the human relationship to our environment, both human-built and natural. A geographic perspective on gender offers a way of understanding how sexism functions on the ground. Women's second-class status is enforced not just through an actual, material geography of exclusion.

Feminist City was my first read for Verso Books new monthly subscription book club (back in July). I wouldn't have necessarily picked this one up so soon had it not been for that and I actually found it really interesting.

I thought it was great that Leslie Kern within the first few pages outlined her position as white, cis-gendered and able-bodied women and how that experience has guided lots of her interactions in city spaces. However she draws on the work of others to highlight that disabled individuals, people of colour, LGBTQ+ communities and other marginalised groups will all have different experiences within the city framework and identifies how geography further marginalises these communities.

Leslie Kern has a very critical and astute set of observations throughout this book as it's broken down into various chapters that focus on motherhood, female friendship, safety, and more. One of the points I found most interesting was about how white women's comfort has been used to marginalise and increase danger for people of colour and homeless people; as areas are gentrified, this pushes out the homeless and people of colour who are then vilified in these spaces.

Indeed, women's lack of comfort in certain spaces can be used as justification for a host of problematic interventions that increase danger for others, for example homeless people and people of colour, in pursuit of comfort for middle-class white women.

Kern does predominantly focus on London and Canadian cities as she outlines these are the ones she has the most experience and observations in. And she still manages to touch in on other cities and make broader observations about cities in general. I also don't think the London/Canadian city focus was a negative for the book as it served to strengthen her arguments and she offered multiple references to other works by feminist geographers and particularly feminist geographers of colour.

This book felt like an excellent starting point for understanding how we construct, interact with spaces and change city spaces to both the benefit and alienation of certain communities in society. And most importantly how this relates to feminism and demands for equality.

The extent to which violations of women's personal space via touch, words, or other infringements are tolerated and even encouraged in the city is a good measure as any for me of how far away we actually are from the social - and feminist city - of spontaneous encounters.