Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell

My Thoughts

This book is fairly outside of what I typically read, and I found it difficult to comprehend. It combines very complex vocabulary with an almost poetic writing style, which made it hard to grasp the topics and concepts being discussed. The complexity of the text, combined with it being a perspective very far outside of what I normally encounter, made it difficult to absorb.

I was recommended this book based on the claim that it was a technical book about feminism, but reading it made me realize that’s not quite what it is. There are technical concepts discussed, like glitches and data collection, but they seem to be used as metaphors rather than explored from a technical perspective. The book felt like a compilation of loosely connected ideas that were all over the place. I understood the words, but I didn’t understand how they came together, and it left a lot of loose strands.

The author does offer some tools or techniques for getting around mass surveillance, but I don’t think some of these ideas are very fleshed out. For example, playing with your gender identity to confuse algorithms and cloak yourself from surveillance sounds interesting, but gender is just one of many data points being collected. With the amount of data gathered today, it’s a very small piece of the puzzle, and I think the book overindexes on it rather than getting at the root of mass surveillance.

Overall, I’m not sure I would recommend this book, though I’ll note that some of my reaction may stem from it not meeting my expectations going in.