A review by bluestjuice
Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--And What We Can Do about It by Kate Harding

5.0

This is excellent, and it is recently published, so I would recommend reading it sooner than later, as the landscape of rape culture is changing yearly (and not all to the bad, on the whole, although there are also some troubling trends that seem to be on the upswing). I wasn't sure what to expect from this, and thought it might be fairly derivative and generic, but Harding actually does an excellent job citing from other works and studies and distilling many of the ideas in ways that make them easier to grasp. As rape culture and gender relations are not a new topic for me, I was pleased to discover more than one instance where she was able to articulate and clarify topics that I have found ambiguous, or at least difficult to fully articulate my reasons for feeling a certain way. Go read this. It's a distressing topic, but Harding's writing hit a sweet spot for me in managing to remain informal and conversational without negatively impacting the seriousness with which she treats her topic. Really very well done.