A necessary cartography of feminist resistance

The five essays that make up Why do some men hate women? have been written over the course of more than half a century of the career of writer Vivian Gornick (Bronx, New York, 1935). An illustrated New Yorker, chronicler of intimacy and nonagenarian feminist with clear references such as Natalia Ginzburg, the author believes that the only way for romantic love to succeed is to accept the other person in their entirety, beyond any sexual potential they may have. The choice of texts that make up Why do some men hate women? explores the lives and artistic careers of writers such as Joan Didion, Paula Fox or Margaret Drabble, and also writers such as Henry Miller, Philip Roth, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer, staunch misogynists. In parallel, Gornick reflects on 1970s feminism in the United States, its connection to literary matters, the complex task of making a name for oneself in the intellectual field of that time, friendship between women, the art of writing stories, and letter writing.

Gornick is one of the most luminous representatives of the second wave of feminism in the United States. Incisive and dissident, clear and perceptive, with a fresh yet forceful and combative language that blends journalism and activism, this great exponent of the autobiographical essay furiously analyzes the ideological disputes within the feminist movement, right down to the most trivial conversations at Tony's Beauty Home, a hair salon in Midtown Manhattan. She captures the pulse of a historical transformation that she observes firsthand, and also reflects on the differences between the various feminist waves, denouncing the misogyny buried (or not) in established authors who are part of the unalterable masculine canon of the 20th century.

An essential combat guide

The combat guide that is Why do some men hate women? It is very necessary in these current times when feminism has let its guard down due to the rise of the far right and seems, unfortunately, to be on the decline. Gornick, determined and brave, studies how male power is constructed, how female submission is transmitted, why the female figure is objectified and humiliated in much male literature, what the patriarchal objectives are in the face of the eternal conquest of the male, and what happens when a woman begins to see her personal experience as something more universal.

Gornick's style, which combines literary criticism with autobiography, leads her to explore the complexities of women with themselves and with others. Some of the texts that appear in Why do some men hate women? were published almost half a century ago in editorials and newspapers of the time, and are now brought together in a volume and contextualized in relation to the #MeToo movement, a structural scourge that has affected women for many generations and that, the further we go in time, instead of being eradicated, seems to reproduce like a plague of cockroaches.

Gornick takes stock of the present and the past, and does so by quoting some of the second-wave feminists such as Betty Friedan, with The mystique of femininity,and Simone de Beauvoir, with The second sex, two exponents of feminism who laid the groundwork fifty years ago and are still a reference for current gender studies. Vivian Gornick's translucent conclusion is that we must continue fighting and never let our guard down. Her writings offer a fascinating insight into what has been achieved and lost during these five decades, and show us the progress made toward equality, which, frankly, doesn't stand out much amidst the eternal and absurd war between the sexes.