Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit, is made up of multiple short essays about sexism. It starts with an uncomfortable experience of a man attempting to tell her a story. The story he tries to tell her is wrong, but he refuses to admit it. The book starts out as laughable, but quickly becomes more and more serious. Solnit shares her many experiences of men assuming they are superior. She also researches and explains multiple sexual assault occurrences. Rebecca Solnit starts each chapter with a picture or painting showing gender roles and the social norm for women. Chapter five starts with a picture of a woman in heels hanging clothes onto a clothing line. She explains in detail of its significance, “Here, in this painting by Ana Teresa Fernandez, a woman both exists and is obliterated” (Solnit, 64). Solnit also starts each section of the essays with interesting and cynical titles. For example, “Who has the Right to Kill You?” (25). She used this rhetorical question to start out the essay in order to make the reader a little angry and uncomfortable. The essay used examples of how males often get away with things they should not and it almost seems like men have the right to kill.
Men Explain Things to Me is an incredible and informative book. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone. I believe this book is important for both females and males to read because it shares many different thoughts and experiences of sexism and gender inequality that many people might not know or think about. Some people might not find the book as interesting as I did, however; it is broken up into nine short essays that make it a lot easier and entertaining to read.