The first feeling I had upon completing The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck written by Mark Manson was a sense of immense letdown. This was following all the hype that surrounds this book. It also reminded me that we need a book that can be read by, and more importantly, is friendly to women and non-binary readers.
I have to admit that there is a certain charm to the way Manson articulates himself which can resonate with younger readers. He articulates the value of self-worth by using popular examples of band members from Metallica, Megadeth and The Beatles. He is blunt, unapologetic and occasionally potty-mouthed. The narrative feels like an insight into various thought processes in the author’s mind which makes it easy as well as enjoyable to follow.
Where self-help books are concerned, this is a refreshing take as opposed to the usual trajectories defined by the likes of Louise Hay and Deepak Chopra, to name a couple of popular examples. Manson does not believe in sugar coating life’s problems for us and this book is a dosage of tough love. But it is also one that also encourages us to look out for ourselves and hope for better lives. To put it crudely: it jolts us into getting our shit together.
there is a certain charm to the way Manson articulates himself which can resonate with younger readers.
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck takes us on a journey through historical and literary examples, finding purpose in this tiny bracket of time that is our lives, working our way around existentialism, weeding out meaningless incidents and benchmarks and facing that inevitable last stage called death. These examples are also interspersed with significant examples from the author’s own life.
In the midst of this humorous and informative trajectory: time and again, Manson throws in jarring sentences that reek of misogyny. While reading, this book would repeatedly subject me to rude shocks. Besides references to his wife and a couple of his acquaintances, the author resorts to talking about women in this casual, almost disposable manner. While I will not endorse the behaviour of some of the women that Manson has had bad experiences with, for example, a certain ex-fling who resorted to stalking and harassing him, that is not sufficient ground for addressing women in a dismissive manner.
I shall back this up with a couple of examples. In the middle of a very important lesson on how we need to evaluate and reevaluate the way we define and measure the idea of success in our lives and the importance of looking beyond material goals, one example of a superficial measure of success particularly stands out – “We realize that we’re never going to cure cancer or go to the moon or feel Jennifer Aniston’s tits. And that’s OK“.
Also Read: The Playboy Kind Of Philosophy, Feminism And Sexual Liberation
No, it is most certainly NOT OK. Here, his and my idea of “OK” will starkly vary. Need I remind the author that women are not property for the enjoyment of men chasing the ‘good life’? While talking about doing away with superficial aims in our life, the author contradicts himself by reducing Jennifer Aniston to an object. Lest he should forget, Jennifer Aniston is a person and not a trophy.
A second disturbing example is of a discussion based on False Memory/Recovered Memory Therapy. I will not deny that the latter is a fertile ground for danger and that false memories planted in people’s heads are issues in need of much discussion and direct action.
The example being referred to here is of Meredith Maran, who thought that her father had sexually abused her when she was young, that the memory was repressed and later rediscovered in therapy. She later realised that this was, in fact, a false memory. By then, it was too late, after having openly accused her father and her family being polarised into those who believed her and those who didn’t.
While there is no denying the ramifications of false complaints of sexual abuse and the way repressed memories are addressed, Manson’s analysis of Maran’s actions are fury-inducing. He equates her mind to a breeding ground for false memories BECAUSE she is a radical feminist, she had a strained relationship with her father and that she was in a lesbian relationship after a string of failed relationships with men.
Need I remind the author that women are not property for the enjoyment of men chasing the ‘good life’?
The blame lies with her therapist and her therapist alone for malpractice and manipulation. This has absolutely nothing to do with Maran’s political affiliations and relationship choices. Feminism and queer relationships cannot be solely reduced to a backdrop for irrational behaviour. That is reductionist and of course, patriarchal.
Perhaps the author needs a reminder that women do not become lesbians after giving up on the idea of relationships with men for good. In addition, the few false cases of sexual abuse are not grounds to deride sexual abuse, women and feminism in all their complex entirety. This is textbook disgruntled MRA behaviour.
As a feminist, as a woman and as someone who does not give two hoots for the gender and sexual binary, The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck made me feel as though I am someone who does not deserve self-help. This is not to claim that I represent all women and queer persons who read and responded to this book in various ways. But where the claims of life lessons and self-help are concerned, it only generated a sense of alienation.
Also Read: The Elephant In The Room Review: Gendered Expectations In The 21st Century
Featured Image Credit: Amazon and The New Daily
It wasn’t written for you dumbass, just as all the various touchy-feely girl power self help books weren’t written for him. But I doubt he feels “alienated” by something clearly geared toward a different demographic. As men we take responsibility for our own emotions and don’t demand the entire world adjust itself to cater to our comfort.
Oh okay. So basically, women wanting self-help is equivalent to touchy feely girl power? Maybe I’ll write a self-help book where I equate men to their genitals, and where our success is measured by which male celebrity’s balls we grab. Maybe then my point will percolate down through your thick skull.
Did you actually read the book? His take on success is exactly that these superficial definitions of „happiness“ are not valuable, that a constructive meaning has to be connected to what you‘re doing.
I have few points to say to the author:
First of all, author of this review has pulled things out of context and trying to push feminist agenda instead of actually reviewing the book itself.
What book said “We no longer need to give a fuck about everything. Life is just what it is. We accept it, warts and all. We realize that we’re never going to cure cancer or go to the moon or feel Jennifer Aniston’s tits. And that’s okay. Life goes on. We now reserve our ever-dwindling fucks for the most truly fuck-worthy parts of our lives: our families, our best friends, our golf swing. And, to our astonishment,”
What the author of this review wrote “We realize that we’re never going to cure cancer or go to the moon or feel Jennifer Aniston’s tits. And that’s OK”
She comfortably omitted context to create false impressions on reader’s minds.
Second example given by the author is also misleading, the name of the chapter which she was referring to is actually named “You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)”. In this chapter, the author himself is saying even he is wrong during many times..
Again, author comfortably left out the entire context:
“It turned out Meredith wasn’t alone. As she describes in her autobiography, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, throughout the 1980s, many women accused male family members of sexual abuse only to turn around and recant years later. Similarly, there was a whole swath of people who claimed during that same decade that there were satanic cults abusing children, yet despite police investigations in dozens of cities, police never found any evidence of the crazy practices described. Why were people suddenly inventing memories of horrible abuse in families and cults? And why was it all happening then, in the 1980s?”
and later, there was also ” No matter how honest and well-intentioned we are, we’re in a perpetual state of misleading ourselves and others for no other reason than that our brain is designed to be efficient, not accurate. Not only does our memory suck—suck to the point that eyewitness testimony isn’t necessarily taken seriously in court cases—but our brain functions in a horribly biased way.”
Third, author of this review wrote “The blame lies with her therapist and her therapist alone for malpractice and manipulation. This has absolutely nothing to do with Maran’s political affiliations and relationship choices. Feminism and queer relationships cannot be solely reduced to a backdrop for irrational behaviour. That is reductionist and of course, patriarchal.”
I don’t know how can author came to that conclusion. Mark Manson never mentioned anything about her being a feminist or about her political affliations in his book. Regarding relationship choices, He simply stated that she couldn’t hold good relationships with any man she’s been with before which was true.
I do agree that Mark Manson shouldn’t have implied (not explicitly) that Meredith turned to woman because she couldn’t hold proper relationships with men before.
The biggest joke of this review is this:
“As a feminist, as a woman and as someone who does not give two hoots for the gender and sexual binary, The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck made me feel as though I am someone who does not deserve self-help”
“This is not to claim that I represent all women and queer persons who read and responded to this book in various ways. ”
Sorry to say this,
If she doesn’t give two hoots for the gender and sexual binary, then why is she using the word “woman” in this context? Why not say “human?” or “homo sapien?”
why are you stating that you are not representing only “women?” and why not “humanity” as a whole?
P.S. I have never read such a biased review in recent times.
First I thought should i give a fuck about this article and this Sanjay guy just saying whatever I wanted too. Then again i had nothing better to do for the moment. So, here is me giving a fuck and saying “Totally Agree”.
I came upon this review when I googled “Has Mark Manson been accused of sexual misconduct” after reading his chapter on ‘false memories’. I thought the lady doth protest too much and wondered what his skeletons were. But of course there are no skeletons. Patriarchy is alive but not doing so well thanks to MB and others like her.
A woman stalker should not be called out in a specific way ?? The audacity and hypocrisy of these feminists is astonishing. I have seen multiple times on this very website, how stalkers are rightly called out, they deserved to be called out and exposed. But to call for different standards for both men and women for the same issues is some feminazi shit. Feminism is empowering women and that is very important but extreme of everything is bad. The case of a deluded feminazi with daddy issues destroying her innocent father’s whole life on baseless claims is being defended, may be if she was not too brainwashed with extremism like these Sanghis, terrorists, white supremacist she could have been more in touch with the reality.
He had written a post about feminism too, wherein, he address exactly what you felt so strongly about. He states that most feminist nowadays, are quite bigoted and simply fail to respect or even tolerate any opinion that differs from their own. He also goes on to say that most feminists nowadays are more concerned with frail and fleeting stuff like, how a particular thing made a woman feel or whatever else. You feeling so strongly about him writing about Jennifer Aniston’s tits, merely proves his point. He probably wrote it without giving it much consideration, had he been a female, maybe he would have written about “The Rock’s” abs or balls or whatever. However, I doubt any male would be offended by that statement of his and write an entire article groaning about it. Just because you are offended doesn’t mean you are right. And if you have read the book, I hope you understand that your feelings probably aren’t worth giving a fuck about either. If you truly want to fight for a noble cause, fight actual rights of women, and other issues like women getting sexually harassed and stuff. Not something as miniscule and petty as objectifying a beautiful actress with a sweet pair of racks(tits). He just picked a random women to use as an example to get his point across to his readers, she happened to be Jennifer Aniston, becuase, let’s face it, her tits are particularly mesmerising. He hasn’t ridiculed or mocked women in general. He just likes Jennifer Aniston’s tits, as I’m sure many straight man would. Get over it!
I’m late to the party, but I will say I agree with this article. I found those same sentences jarring too. I don’t think Manson consciously meant offense, but to me it revealed a deep unconscious bias we have in society toward women, and hurts in a way that it can’t hurt for men, because they haven’t been oppressed in the same way. Manson also tells in the book of a period in his life when he was “a player” and to me that reveals something about him. Not every man is a player and it takes a certain mindset to be that way, a mindset based on beliefs that don’t go away simply because you get married and/or settle down.
@Aaron De’suziki or whatever, I have patents. Women got patent rights in 1845, when did men get patent rights? I can’t remember. Can you Google for me? I don’t know computer. 1980s women were not allowed to be raped in marriage, Wow. Can you tell me when did men get that right? I don’t know about graphical user interfaces, please navigate it for me, I only was able to grok the terminal since it’s so simple, it’s one color, and only I change that color. Easier on my brain. Also, when did women allow you to own property? Feminazis. I’m here for you though now. But you have to tell me more about yourself. When did you have your movement for not being considered property due to the lack of a nomadic lifestyle placing land, women of any color and people of a certain color one and the same to maintain the new emerging concept of human ownership? I sympathize greatly with you and your plight. So please let me know your human – or alien – history here. Looks like you are having a tough time. I’ll be waiting here for a few years to see what you say. With the greatest love, Marginalizia