Survival Guide for Life in a Sexist Society

By Jill Filipovic, AlterNet. Posted April 25, 2008.

Editor's note: Since this Q&A was conducted, it has come to light that It's a Jungle Out There contains racist cartoons of "natives" in a jungle setting. AlterNet does not condone nor promote books that contain this kind of problematic imagery. In light of the controversy, the publisher has taken responsibility for the images, and agreed to pull them from future printings. The author has also apologized.

It's not easy being a feminist. From silly stereotypes (hairy armpits! lots of cats!) to anti-choice nuts (who support the right to life unless the life in question belongs to a person who has already been born) to the dudes who think women's rights advocates are "cute" and challenging (until they figure out that you won't do their laundry for them), there's a lot to leave a woman frustrated. But as Amanda Marcotte argues in her new book, while it may be impossible to escape the jungle of sexism, there are at least some fun -- and funny -- ways to wade through it.

It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments is Marcotte's how-to manual for feminist-minded women to take on a sexist society and have a good laugh along the way. And Marcotte herself is no stranger to wielding humor against misogynist attacks -- as a blogger at Pandagon and Offsprung and a writer for RH Reality Check, she regularly does battle with anti-choicers, right-wing extremists and anti-feminists of all stripes.

She was also at the center of controversy when Sen. John Edwards hired her as a blogger for his presidential campaign. Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, launched an attack on Marcotte and encouraged his supporters to put her in her place. The right-wing blogs fueled the assault, the mainstream media picked up the issue, and Marcotte was subjected to a flood of hate mail that could be summed up, as she put it, "You have a potty mouth, you stupid cunt." She eventually resigned from the campaign, but her experience with right-wing hit men has clearly shaped her determination to fight back instead of shutting up.

And her book is the ultimate instruction manual in fighting back.

Jill Filipovic: What inspired you to write It's a Jungle Out There in the first place?

Amanda Marcotte: Well, with the very personal nature of blogs I get a lot of questions on how to fight back against sexism on a personal, day-to-day level. I also live in a red state, albeit in a blue city in a red state, so I felt like I had a unique perspective on how to confront the sexism that's still out there, since I feel like I get it more often than a lot of other feminists do. I came up with a survival guide, a la The Zombie Survival Guide. I thought that it would just be a fun book for feminists to read and have a laugh at the unending sexism we address on a daily basis.

JF: Is the book aimed at nonfeminists too?

AM: I tried to address the issue of women who don't call themselves feminists but who are in fact feminists by kind of making fun of the whole debate. If you're afraid to call yourself a feminist, it's probably an unfounded fear. So I would hope that women who don't like sexism but who are still scared to call themselves feminists read this and walk away identifying themselves more accurately. But there are other books that address the issue more thoroughly, so I didn't want to deal with it too much.

JF: I know you're a long-standing Insufferable Music Snob, but what was the reasoning behind including recommendations for feminist-minded movies and music?

AM: I'm published on Seal Press, and with a lot of their books they ask you to put a resource section at the end. I've read a billion feminists books, and they all have the same resources sections -- here's a list of books, here are some blogs. When I started to write it, Jessica [Valenti]'s book [Full Frontal Feminism] had just come out, and I thought, why use the same resources section? So I thought, you know what would be more fun? Let's make the resource section the kind of stuff that women engage with on a daily basis. And what do women engage with more than pop culture? I was definitely looking for stuff that you could look to in order to give you energy on a daily basis.

See more stories tagged with: amanda marcotte, feminism

Jill Filipovic is AlterNet's Reproductive Justice and Gender editor and a law student at NYU. More of her writing is available online at her blog, Feministe.

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