When I say finished, I mean that I had my fill, not really that I read every sentence from front to back. Although I found the author’s writing style very accessible and engaging, I think I would have enjoyed her more as a fiction writer.

I get the impression that Chesler is a someone with a capital S in feminist circles and so maybe it’s the ferociousness of her fans that earn positive criticism for this book. Personally, I didn’t find that she had much logic to back up the sweeping claims tha she made, very few sources cited, just the power of her own words. I also found her analysis of the inequality between genders to be too heavily reliant on examples from the past instead of a contemporary focus. Basically, this book will be popular with those who are fond of setting up soap boxes and railing against the masculine social institution, particularly those who feel the need to earn their intellectual and liberal badges.
Somewhere in the middle of the second chapter, I just said the hell with it. I’m not intelligent and bitter enough to decipher this nonsense. The one interesting thought that I did bring away from it was that it makes sense that the psychiatric field would be skewed in favor of the masculine since the foundations of the field were developed during a time period when women didn’t actively intellectually contribute to society. Still, Chesler’s persistence in dismissing many female therapists as “brainwashed” by the psychiatric institution contradicts her assertion that women are equal individuals, capable of autonomous thought. To be truly equal, women have to be willing to step away from the wailing wall of the past’s indignities and move forward. Bemoaning the past and expecting special treatment as compensation is not equality.