There are at least two things to like about Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture:

1) It’s an impressive example of a book sustaining itself most of the way through without a definite thesis.
2) It contains some insightful observations quoted from a 17 year old boy.

No, I didn’t like the book in the ordinary sense of the word, but I had the good fortune to pick it up the day I sent in a book chapter in which I quoted Alfred Ayer’s claim that the language of moral wrongdoing is like saying something with a peculiar tone of horror or special exclamation point. I found Ayer’s words amusing because while they’re a bit odd, we all know what he’s talking about, what it is to talk about something in a tone of horror. Female Chauvanist Pigs may be the most sublime example I have ever read of talking about something in a tone of horror, without making any explicit claim about what’s wrong with it. She stars off mentioning strippers talking about lap dances on television, then on to girls in skimpy outfits on trampolines, Britney Spears, Charlies Angels… and that’s just the first page. She eventually gets around to devoting an entire chapter being horrified by lesbian culture. Not my normal idea of quality non-fiction, but it certainly could be studied in order to learn the subtleties of prose style and peculiar tones of horror.

It is only after the book is two-thirds over that she starts talking about middle school and high school students, and useful information creeps in. After Levy has spent a due amount of time being horrified by girls in skimpy clothes, she quotes a seventeen year old boy saying “What girls don’t understand is that guys always want girls. If every girl dressed casually, you’d still like girls. It’s like, you don’t have to exhaust yourselves.” Suddenly, we have intelligent commentary: girls dress slutty because they don’t fully understand what it is that attracts guys to them. Yes! Someone should do more to correct the misperceptions of women on this point. But I suspect Levy is too busy being horrified.

By the last chapter, a definite criticism of “raunch culture” has emerged, and it’s a superficially sex-positive one: raunch culture involves ignoring women’s sexual needs. Three women who are unsatisfied with their sex lives are quoted. The suggestion is that they are representative of all the women described in the earlier part of the book. However, Levy doesn’t actually establish whether, say, the women behind CAKE, a group that describes itself as promoting female sexuality and which Levy is horrified by, are failing at their goal of sexual self-expression. She just assumes it, and is too busy being horrified to check. I suspect part of the reason the chapter on teenagers contained the most useful information is that Levy didn’t feel comfortable with the nasty treatment she gives adults.

I have at least one good reason to think Levy would have found something different had she bothered to ask a few obvious questions. That reason is one of my favorite bloggers, Greta Christina. Greta has among her writing credits stuff for On Our Backs, a lesbian magazine Levy mentions with horror. Her shtick would work well on Greta: She writes about sex [special exclamation mark] Look at this thing she said about sex [special exclamation mark] Look at this other thing she said about sex [special exclamation mark] But anyone who’s read Greta’s work with an open mind knows Greta’s getting what she wants, she’s not just performing a role copied from male chauvinism, as Levy’s treatment would imply.

This is what passes for a major feminist book? Hey Greta: if this book can sell well, you no longer have an excuse for not being a bestselling author.