Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World

Product Information

The fear I felt when a man stared at me in the Tube and then took the seat next to me as soon as it opened up.

City of Friends' is a thrilling affirmation of the power of women's friendships, and touches on the importance of lesbian and queer community spaces as well. She acknowledges that she is writing it from a cis and white pov, but she does address minorities in the city as well, even going into how white women form part of the policing of space.Aku sendiri cukup tercengang dengan banyaknya data yang diberikan oleh Kern, mengatakan kalau ruang publik masih "merampas" privasi mereka yang bukan laki-laki berkulit putih. Instead, she believes we ought to take a closer look at how cities perpetuate inequality from the perspective of race, gender, ability, and class. At the same time, however, I police my own clothing, posture, facial expressions, and other cues to avoid male harassment" (114). Mengenai penataan kota yang selama ini masih bias gender tertentu: laki-laki, cis, dan berkulit putih. What's more, she's openly pessimistic about every change that's been made by far – everything one does to make the cities safer and better for one group of women, will make it worse for other demographic groups, ad infinitum.

What is explored here is the ethos of the feminist city rather than what the city itself would look like, and is therefore frustratingly without 'solutions,' both in terms of design and new ideas, which are few and far between the personal anecdotes and how it is woven with observations from existing scholarship in the fields of feminist geography and urban studies. This amplification of bodily experiences such as exhaustion and pain emerges as a result of everyday labour (Parker, 2017). And she still manages to touch in on other cities and make broader observations about cities in general. Thus, while I understand that the book is centred around self-reflection, the incorporation of urban feminist knowledge from the Global South would make the analysis more convincing and generalisable. This book is ultimately a guide to loving our urban neighbors well—providing better access to public restrooms, making public transit more accessible and hospitable for pregnant women, keeping women safe from assault and harassment on the street, resisting gentrification, and ensuring marginalized groups feel consistently welcomed in the spaces they navigate through.In Feminist City Leslie Kern analyzes what physical, social, and economic barriers women encounter in their everyday urban life and points out alternative scenarios that work for all. In any event, I enjoy reading work by academics who try to reach outside the academy with their writing. Kern summarizes the work of many interesting thinkers and activists, and recounts her personal experiences as a young woman and, later, mother struggling to navigate urban spaces. Though it is contentious, I really enjoyed that it was largely based in anecdote, while still managing to make the theory and examples intersectional.