I want a harrowing descent into the dark corners of the manosphere
Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates 
In Men Who Hate Women, feminist activist Laura Bates descends into the disturbing Dante’s inferno of the manosphere, a collection of online communities devoted to dismantling feminism and restoring rigid notions of masculinity. An unflinching work of investigative journalism, Men Who Hate Women explores a range of misogynistic subcultures from incels, involuntarily celibate men who blame their sexlessness on the women who reject them, to men’s rights activists who insist equality of the sexes means their oppression. Bates suggests such virulent misogyny isn’t confined to cyberspace—it spills into the real world in the form of harassment, murder and mass shootings. Yet when men like Elliot Rodger kill women in acts of vengeance, the media rarely recognizes their acts as terrorism. Such men are portrayed as “lone wolves”—not members of a broader movement or a symptom of a greater problem. Urgent and unsettling, Men Who Hate Women reveals the manosphere is a coordinated ideological movement with serious real-world consequences, not a fringe internet subculture.
For fans of Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin and Pink-Pilled: Women & the Far Right by Lois Shearing.
I want feminism with a splash of 90s & 2000s pop culture
Trainwreck by Sady Doyle
How do you measure a book’s greatness?
For me, a book’s greatness is directly proportional to how long I remember it.
I read Trainwreck 5 years ago but I still think of it often. In her incisive book, Doyle examines our cultural obsession with condemning women who transgress traditional notions of femininity. If you’re a millennial like me, the word trainwreck conjures the age of ruthless paparazzi: a distressingly skinny, strung out Amy Winehouse struggling to remember the words to “Rehab,” a disheveled Lindsay Lohan facing DUI charges, a deranged Britney Spears shaving her head.
But Doyle argues the figure of the trainwreck predates TMZ and the internet. She examines women as diverse as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte, Whitney Houston, and Sylvia Plath—and, of course, Britney Spears, the pinnacle of pop star trainwrecks.
Why—Doyle wonders—do we ridicule these women and relish their downfall?
Often, trainwrecks are simply women who’ve violated their proper roles. They’re “bad” girls: too loud, too opinionated, too ambitious, too independent, too sexual. While we demonize women for their flaws, we forgive equally “bad” men (after all, does Hemingway’s suicide overshadow Old Man and the Sea? does Fitzgerald’s infamous alcoholism eclipse The Great Gatsby?).
Our culture turns complicated women into cautionary tales. Slut shaming Britney sends an indisputable message: women who defy social norms and dare to express their sexuality will be made examples of. Blending feminist history, pop culture analysis, and sharp social commentary, Trainwreck suggests our fixation with female downfall says more about us as a culture than the women themselves.
For fans of Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert and Toxic: Women, Fame & the Tabloid 2000s by Sarah Ditum.
I want feminism with mythological creatures, final girls & femme fatales
Dead Blondes & Bad Mothers by Sady Doyle
In her fascinating follow-up to Trainwreck, Doyle examines how disobedient women are recast as villains and monsters. From mythology and history to macabre horror movies and blood-soaked true crime, our culture loves to demonize women who step outside the bounds of acceptable womanhood. In slasher films, the girls bold enough to have sex are the first to be brutally butchered. When serial killers like Ed Gein or Norman Bates terrorize a town, their psychopathy is blamed on their overbearing mothers. Patriarchy confines us to rigid roles: dutiful daughters, submissive wives, self-sacrificing mothers. Those who transgress these roles are tarred and feathered. As Doyle shrewdly observes, “Men define humanity, and women, insofar as they are not men, are not human. Thus, women must necessarily be put under male control—and to the extent that we resist control, we are monstrous.”
For fans of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women & the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy and Madwomen in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar.
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