The Feminist Utopia Project
This inspiring and thoughtful anthology imagines a world where women’s bodies, minds, and beliefs are undoubtedly respected.
If feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities, what would that the ideal society really look like? With the thought-provoking The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future, you can leave pay inequality, harassment, glass ceilings, and sexism behind and wander through a world where women’s bodies, minds, and beliefs are undoubtedly respected.
For the inspiring anthology, editors Alexandra Brodsky and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff asked their peers of activists, journalists, and artists, as well as the public at large, to sketch out scenarios where feminist dreams are fully realized. “We want more,” the editors write in the introduction to the collection of essays, stories, poems, and artworks. “[But] how can we dream big when are constantly playing whack-a-mole with the patriarchy?” So the editors implored the contributors, which include television writer Jill Soloway and trans activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, to put down their mallets momentarily and start dreaming.
In Gloria Malone’s “Feminist Utopia Teen Mom Schedule,” the high school has an on-site daycare where the a teen mom can visit and breast-feed her baby. In “Not on My Block,” a picture of life without street harassment, Hannah Giorgis writes of not having to choose between a prohibitively expensive cab ride and walking home with the risk of violence from men. In one of the anthology’s several interviews, a high-school teacher imagines a world in which sex-ed classes include the history and politics of reproductive health and students would speak with a pharmacist to really understand how oral contraceptives work.
What’s more, The Feminist Utopia Project is thoughtfully organized to avoid creating a hierarchy of topics or contributors, and the layout reflects its utopian vision right down the typefaces used, which were, of course, designed by talented women.
In total, the works are poised to “ignite your feminist imaginations to help you dream bigger and weirder and inspire our movements to greater collective ambitions,” in the editor’s words. It’s a welcome relief to spend a little time in a place where rampant gender inequality seems like a bad and distant dream.
Reviewed by
Amanda McCorquodale
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
