F- Bomb • Dispatches from the War on Feminism
By Lauren McKeon
240 pages • ISBN 978-0-86492-994-5
Why are women leading the fight against feminism and women’s rights?
It is a dirty word, a quaint relic of the 1960s, a flawed movement that centres on heterosexual, white experiences. Today’s women are abandoning feminism in unprecedented numbers. Even scarier, some are leading the charge too send it to its grave. Across North America, women head anti-feminist PR campaigns; they support anti-feminist politicians; they’re behind lawsuits to silence the victims of campus rape; they participated in Gamergate, the violent, vitriolic anti-women-in-technology movement; and they’re on the frontlines of the fight to end reproductive rights.
Everywhere we turn there’s evidence an anti-feminist bomb has exploded, sometimes detonated by the unlikeliest suspects. Between women who say they don’t need feminism and women who can’t agree on what feminism should be, the challenges of fighting for gender equality have never been greater.
F-Bomb takes readers on a witty, insightful, and deeply fascinating journey into today’s anti-feminist universe. Through a series of dispatches from the frontlines of the new gender wars, Lauren McKeon explores generational attitudes, debates over inclusiveness, and differing views on the intersection of race, class, and gender. She also asks the uncomfortable question: if women aren’t connecting with feminism, what’s wrong with it? And she confronts the uncomfortable truth: for gender equality to prevail, we first need to understand where feminism has gone wrong and where it can go from here.
In a world where “everyday sexism” dominated Olympic coverage and in which 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump, F-Bomb presents urgent and necessary discussion on women´s lives today.
Laura McKeon was the editor of Canada’s progressive, independent This Magazine from 2011 to 2016. While at This, Lauren helmed one of the bestselling issues in recent years, “Why Canada Need More Feminism,” and also organized a sold-out event on the topic, which headlined a diverse, intersectional roster of speakers. Before leading This, Lauren worked as a reporter, editor and writer in the North for several years, living in Yellowknife and travelling Canada’s territories and northern Alberta.
Today, she is the newly appointed digital editor at The Walrus and a contributing editor at Toronto Life, where she recently wrote about her experiences with sexual assault is 15 Years of Silence. In response, Lauren has heard from dozens of women around the world who’ve shared their own experiences – some for the first time – and was prominently featured in the documentary PTSD: Beyond Trauma, which aired in January 2017 on David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things.
