You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism
About this book
Editor's NoteStopping sexism…Headlee’s guide isn’t just for women: it’s for anyone who wants to create a more equitable and inclusive society.DescriptionAs she admits in the first salvo of her enlightening new guide to battling gender discrimination, award-winning author and radio journalist Celeste Headlee is herself … a sexist.But aren’t we all? Indeed we are, no matter the strength of our convictions otherwise, and herein lies the crux of Headlee’s examination of inherent—and often unconscious—cultural biases: Whether we can admit it or not, we all bring instinctive and learned prejudices to our interactions and conversations, to the detriment of everyone.Fortunately, Headlee presents a thoughtful, practical, and cogent manual on becoming aware of, and reversing, the sometimes subtle sexism with which we all struggle, actively or not. With the same empathetic and circumspect approach seen in her 2017 book We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter, Headlee lays out the fundamentals of creating allies, rather than alienating those who may simply be playing prescribed cultural roles. But deprogramming people without making them defensive (and dismissive) is easier said than done.The culprit? “Benevolent sexism.” As Headlee writes, this pervasive daily frustration for at least half the population is “hard to address because people often fail to recognize so-called friendly sexism as harmful.” To combat this, the author walks us through an often surprising and always illuminating three-step process, drawing on human psychology and refreshing common sense. In the end, we’re rewarded with a compelling take on one of our most insidious problems—and, happily, a way to bring people together in these divided times.