Sexual Decoys: gender, race and war in imperial democracy Zillah Eisenstein Zed Books, 142pp, £14.99 ISBN 184277817X
Zillah Eisenstein has won deserved praise for her trenchant indictments of gender and political issues. Her latest book tackles both of these topics head-on. Eisenstein argues that existing gender and racial stereotypes in the US are a form of cultural imperialism far worse than today’s commentators (most of them, in Eisenstein’s reckoning, being conservative white men) would acknowledge.
While academics and activists such as Ella Shohat and Beverly Guy-Sheftall testify to the importance of this book, its initially provocative statements come to seem commonplace and verge on self-parody. The final chapter, for instance, is called "A Polysexual Ungendering of Democratic Feminisms".
Even its politics are unclear.
Bush and the Republican Party, unsurprisingly, come in for much criticism for their financial and political imperialism, but then so does every other modern political party, apparently for the same reasons. The closest Eisenstein comes to applauding modern politicians is in citing a TV show called Commander in Chief, in which Geena Davis plays the first female US president, but she seems to see this as a fantastical pipe dream. The prospect of Hillary Clinton entering the White House in 2008 is not even considered.
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