Jessica Bennett - Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual For a Sexist Workplace

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Portfolio Penguin is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published in the United States of America by Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2016

First published in Great Britain by Portfolio 2016

Copyright Jessica Bennett, 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover illustration Saskia Wariner
Illustrations by Saskia Wariner with Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

Background graphic by Miloje/Shutterstock, Inc.

Ink splatters throughout by AnaWhite/Shutterstock, Inc.

Grenade illustration by Kovalenko Alexander/Shutterstock, Inc.

Fist art by Zmiter/Shutterstock, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-241-24485-2

Jessica Bennett is an award-winning journalist and critic who writes on women, sexuality, and culture. She is a columnist at the New York Times, where you can regularly find her byline in the Sunday style section on topics ranging from feminist sororities to female pot entrepreneurs to the psychological hell of that little text bubble that pops up on your iPhone when somebody is typing (or not typing). She recently authored the first profile of Monica Lewinsky in a decade, capturing her plight to redefine her story. Jessica is also a contributing editor at LeanIn.org, the nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, where she cofounded and curates the Lean In Collection, a photo partnership with Getty Images to change the way women are depicted in stock photography.

TO MY OWN FEMINIST FIGHT CLUB:

the ultimate squad, sisterhood, girl army, #pussyposse, and battle comrades a gal could ask for.

You are my queens.

There is no right way to read this book. Read it front to back, open it in the middle, or treat it like a cookbook: flip to the sections you like best, write in the margins, take notes in the back, tear out pages, or slide them underneath your bosss door.

The goal of this book is to provide you with battle tactics: simple, easy to follow, effective tricks for combatting sexist, subtly sexist, overtly sexist, and sometimes just oblivious behaviors that exist in even our most progressive offices.

Much of what youll read here is inspired by my own

experiences, as well as those of colleagues, sources, and friends. But it is also backed up by data: vetted, published, peer-reviewed research you can find documented at the end. The tone of this book may be light, but its basis is notand not a premise or a fight move exists without statistical evidence to back it up.

This book wont describe every character nor every workplace. But my hope is that there is something in it for everyone, no matter their career level or economic class, their race, sexual orientation, or gender identity. I am writing for women, but I am also writing for menbecause you, male feminists, are crucial to this battle.

Feminist Fight Club is a manual, it is a manifesto, but its also a choose-your-own-adventureleft in the hands of you, the reader, to carry forward. I hope you will.

1 FOR SHUTTING UP MANTERRUPTERS

2 MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

3 TO DRY MALE TEARS

4 FOR KEEPING HAIR OUT OF EYES DURING BATTLE

5 PREVENT BROPROPRIATION WITH THIS HANDY STAMP

6 BECAUSE: WHISKEYYYYYY

fem-i-nist / n.

A person who believes in equality between men and women. (YOU!)

pa-tri-ar-chy / n.

A system that was created by and for men, in everything from language (human) to your office temperature (yes, that AC is actually set to a temp most comfortable to the XY chromosome).

No, not every man is part of the patriarchy. But we do refer to the patriarchy as The Man.

Fem-i-nist Fight Club / n.

Your crew, your posse, your girl gang; your unconditionally helpful professional support system; your ride-or-die homies. Down with the patriarchy!

The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries.

Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress

It was a fight clubexcept without the fighting and without the men. Every month or so, a dozen of uswomen in our twenties and thirties, struggling writers and creative types, most of us with second jobswould gather at a friends apartment (actually, her parents apartment: none of us had an apartment big enough to fit that many people). Shed provide the pasta, salad, or pasta salad, and wed bring the wine (and seltzer for some reason we all really liked seltzer). Wed pile our plates high and sink into the cushioned couches in her living room to talkor, bitch, ratherabout our jobs.

In those early days, the rules of the fight club were simple: