I have to preface this by saying that, while being generally aware of feminist concepts and terms, I have not really read any explicitly feminist theory. I always got the impression that it was not “for me” as it came from a place so removed from my own lived experience, often with no regard for it or outright contempt and hostility. I could engage with and understand how damaging and oppressive patriarchal structures are to women and queer people but didn’t fully grasp just how much it impacts me as a cishet man. I realize that it’s lazy and incredibly self centered to not engage more deeply on subjects that are not directly relevant to me as a person but can’t deny that I struggle to get deeply invested in theory I don’t find some emotional resonance in. If I only engage with something on a purely intellectual level without being able to apply it to lived experiences and critically examine the way those concepts interact with some baseline that’s more intimately familiar it tends to fall flat.

All of that is to say that I’m coming into this book pretty blind so I’m being totally mind blown by concepts that are likely already well trodden for many here. I have a lot more thoughts I’d like to share but feel I should probably just re read the first two chapters again to fine tune them to the actual text rather than going off on an excited but uninformed tangent