After reading Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks, I felt a sense of pride in being a woman, and in being a feminist. The beginning of the text had me hooked. I think that nowadays, it can be considered embarrassing to have to explain to people that you are a feminist, simply because feminism’s reputation, as well as its mission, has been completely and utterly tarnished. I really enjoyed the acknowledgment of this in her writing, since it’s the sad truth of this (white supremacist, capitalistic, and patriarchal hell-scape) society that we live in. I also like that she aims for her readers to be able to understand her message clearly without being pretentious, and also makes an effort to mention Black and indigenous efforts of women’s liberation throughout her work. Her focus on intersectionality and the importance of eradicating racial inequalities within feminist spaces was very important to me. I found hooks’ writing to be super engaging and full of wit – it was a very entertaining and enlightening read for me!

I spent a lot of my formative years in online spaces (mostly tumblr) where LGBTQ+ voices were amplified, and talks of gender and sexuality were very common, so some of the ideas I read about in Sex and Gender 101 were not unfamiliar to me at all (gender is a construct, sexuality is fluid…) However, I hardly knew anything about the different chromosome combinations that can be observed in those who are intersex! I thought that was really interesting. I definitely think that more people should be exposed to this knowledge. I’m genuinely very happy that I learned something new, it feels so exciting and encourages me to learn even more and do some research of my own!