Book Review: Women vs Feminism: Why We All Need Liberating from the Gender Wars - Joanna Williams

 

Reading Joanna Williams’ Women vs Feminism is like opening a window in a room that has been sealed off by feminism’s stifling perfume of self-pity, paranoia, and sanctimony. The book is fresh air; feminism is stale air-freshener. Williams does what few dare: she laughs at the absurdities of modern feminism, then burns them to the ground. Let’s be blunt: feminism today is not a movement, it’s a business model. The product? Female fragility, packaged and sold by academics, journalists, and activists who make a living convincing women they’re helpless. Williams rightly skewers this scam. The “empowered” feminist of 2025 can’t cope with a wolf-whistle, a spicy joke, or, heaven forbid, a differing opinion. The suffragettes fought for the vote; their descendants fight for trigger warnings on Jane Austen. Williams exposes feminism as the world’s most successful con: it manufactures oppression in a society where women are freer, richer, and more powerful than at any point in history. Why? Because grievance pays. Feminism today is a hustle run by middle-class commissars in the academy and media, cashing in on victimhood while ordinary women roll their eyes and get on with their lives. The book is particularly brutal on campus culture, and rightly so. University feminists demand “safe spaces” from dangerous ideas, as if words themselves are atomic bombs. It’s a theatre of the absurd: adults hiding from books, fainting at debates, and demanding censorship like spoiled children. Williams nails the hypocrisy: a movement once about resilience is now about wrapping women in bubble wrap and calling it progress. And let’s not ignore feminism’s new obsession: policing men. The movement now functions like a gender Stasi, sniffing out microaggressions, flirting infractions, and “problematic” jokes. Feminists shriek about “toxic masculinity” while embodying toxic authoritarianism. As Williams points out, the problem isn’t men keeping women down, it’s feminism keeping women weak. Of course, feminists will wail that Williams is a traitor. That’s their trick: claim to speak for all women, then smear dissenting women as “handmaidens.” The reality? Feminism doesn’t represent women anymore. It represents a shrill minority addicted to hashtags, HR policies, and Guardian op-eds. Ordinary women don’t need feminism to tell them they’re oppressed; they’re too busy running businesses, raising families, or enjoying freedoms feminists pretend don’t exist. Women vs Feminism is a glorious act of heresy. It shows that feminism is not liberation but a cage lined with pink padding, built by activists who think women can’t cope without constant supervision. Williams smashes that cage with relish. This book doesn’t just dismantle feminism, it ridicules it. It reveals the movement as a parody of itself: a shrieking toddler in a Che Guevara T-shirt, clutching a “Believe All Women” placard with one hand and a soy latte with the other. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at the hypocrisy of modern feminism, this book is for you. If you’ve ever suspected that feminism is less about equality and more about controlling how everyone speaks, thinks, and behaves, you’ll find proof here. And if you’ve ever been too afraid to say what you know deep down, that feminism has become a joyless, authoritarian farce, Williams has already said it for you. Read it. Laugh at it. Use it as a shield the next time a feminist lectures you on your “privilege.” Williams has already fired the shots, you just have to reload. Feminism wanted a gender war. Williams has given it a firing squad.