The most enduring stereotypes about feminists is that they are manhaters. Interestingly, few empirical studies have examined this stereotype for its veracity. Chapter 4 critically examines the stereotype that feminists dislike men and that feminism is a movement against men. Social psychological research on women’s attitudes toward men is examined and finds that anti-feminists actually feel more hostility toward men than do feminists. The function and implication of the manhating feminist myth is critically examined in this chapter. The feminist manhater myth persists in order to undermine the feminist movement and to drive a wedge between traditional and non-traditional women. Related strategies to make feminism unpalatable, such as lesbian-baiting, are also critically examined. Chapter 4 ends with strategies to reduce the impact of the manhater stereotype and to foster gender equality. The empirical work measuring the effects of women/gender studies classes on students is presented, and teaching children about gender discrimination are some strategies presented.

Chapter 6 argues that in the Mediterranean crime novel, women are scrutinised by the male gaze, their body parts being vivisected and objectified by the male detective. Focusing the investigation on the male detective and on male teams, these series fail to acknowledge societal changes in terms of female participation in work and society at large. Violence against women is frequent in these narratives, but is never framed in terms of gender violence but of racial and political (or state) violence, if not diminished into an individual crime caused by greed or deviance. The female writers analysed in this monograph also fail to address gender issues convincingly. Both Giménez Bartlett and Aykol centre their series around a female character. Yet these characters simply replicate the male gaze and objectify male characters. They are also constructed as postfeminist women who are commercially motivated and mistake consumerism for liberty. These series also fail to address gender violence, replacing the female as a victim of patriarchally engineered socio-political inequalities with the representation of villainous mother figures capable of emotional manipulation, violence and murder.

Contemporary readers tend to view The Bell Jar through a post-feminist lens. Kate Harding situates the novel within a cultural and historical moment that we too readily lose sight of. Harding reads the novel in the context of 1950s discourses in which the gendered roles that Esther resists are enforced by sexual violence. Drawing on mid-twentieth century rape laws, Harding reveals the disconnect between Esther’s view of events and the contemporary readers’. Where the latter will see acquaintance rape and female victimisation, the former will see sexual availability and victim-blaming. In her brave and original response to The Bell Jar, Harding brings to light the pervasive rape culture that underpins Esther’ss story, and reveals the importance of this underpinning to our understanding of the novel.