Kay Gabriel on Andrea Long Chu's controversial and recent book 'females'.
"It’s not clear what Females achieves in the warmed-over theoretical truisms of a prior cultural moment, beyond the “projection” that it promises, or a scandalized reaction to the comedic bit. And the problem with the bit — the problem for comedy in general, a genre that Chu more than once expresses an affinity for — is that its theses have conceptual consequences and social implications, whether or not, in the last instance, Chu really means what she says. However tangentially, Females addresses political problems with significant stakes: bodily autonomy, reproductive justice, gender liberation, sexual violence. In the face of those struggles, maybe it makes somebody a killjoy to hate feeling like they’re being fucked with. But so what? Instead of the carte blanche of the bit, we could opt to commit to the concepts that we mobilize, and to being accountable to their consequences."