Let’s Talk about It

Thirty years ago, when Elizabeth Renzetti was an editor at the Globe and Mail, the paper launched a new column, simply called “Men.” At one point, it featured an “absurd” argument that “pop-feminists” would be responsible for an “explosion of male violence and of men oppressing women.” Furious that women’s struggles for equality were blamed for male rage, Renzetti —who “was not a writer, at that point”— offered an inspired response. Readers answered with a deluge of letters, and she was promptly given her own weekly column.

What She Said can be read as a continuation of that column: an exploration of the home, government, filmmaking, journalism, and more. Feminism is not about ruining things for men, Renzetti writes; it’s about making sure that women’s lives are not diminished or destroyed by restricted opportunities, low pay, and, too often, violence. Across ten chapters, she engages with the director Sarah Polley, the Gitxsan journalist Angela Sterritt, the former prime minister Kim Campbell, and others. Their conversations are sometimes in person — interviews or press conferences — and sometimes through books and articles. Whatever the form, Renzetti rightly rails against the persistent injustices that women face, while looking for hope for the future.

Today’s feminist struggles are global, and the stakes can be very high. Renzetti describes Iranian schoolgirls who were “beaten and poisoned” for challenging an authoritarian government. In Mexico and Kenya, women have been protesting the mass murder of other women and girls. Afghan women are not allowed to go to school; since August 2024, the Taliban government has forbidden them to speak in public.

The United States provides cautionary lessons. In 2017, the New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of the producer Harvey Weinstein’s serial sexual harassment and abuse. Renzetti is hopeful about the discussions about predatory behaviour prompted by their reporting, but she is exasperated by men’s professed surprise: “Our husbands listened, mouths agape. I remember feeling irritated at their shock. How could they possibly not know that this was the way of the world?” Women’s struggles are not, Renzetti regrets, a linear story of progress. Women must repeatedly challenge comfortable ignorance and the patriarchal status quo.

Contemporary expressions of patriarchy and sexism threaten hard-fought victories. In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing the 1973 decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion. Two of the justices who made the decision, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, had been accused of sexual harassment and assault in the past, by Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford, respectively. Effectively, two men publicly called out for harming women reversed decades of headway that affirmed their right to choose. “How’s that for a backlash?” asks Renzetti.

Stories from Canada are linked to global attacks on women and their rights, and Renzetti stresses the connections. “This chapter isn’t about me, but it is also about me,” she writes at one point. “More than that, it’s about all of us.” Before her mother’s divorce, Renzetti grew up in a household with a violent father. She recognizes other women who stay silent when they face domestic violence because they “feel trapped, helpless, afraid, ashamed, worried.” When they do speak up, many are not believed by the police or judges — if their situations are investigated at all.

Violence suffered by Indigenous women and girls is horrific in yet another way. Indigenous women are “sixteen times more likely to be murdered than a white woman in Canada,” Renzetti reports. She quotes Sterritt, who has written, “People who kill Indigenous women may feel that they will get away with it because the legal system, the judicial system, the media, and the public care far less if an Indigenous woman goes missing or is murdered than they do if the woman is white.” After describing such indifference in her Globe column, Renzetti received an email from a reader who callously compared the violent deaths of Indigenous women to “culling the herd.”

Heroic women, such as the Filipino American journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, knowingly risk their lives to fight injustice. Ressa bravely wrote about the mass violence committed by Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, as well as his use of Facebook trolls to shore up support for his regime. Such truth telling comes at a terrible cost. “At the height of a hate campaign directed at Ressa by the previous Filipino government,” Renzetti soberly recounts, “she was receiving more than ninety attacks an hour on social media,” including death and rape threats.

Women are also assailed, or simply treated as unequal, in less horrifying but still enraging ways. Their stories are told more infrequently than those of men, for example. “Less than 6 per cent of top-grossing films between 2007 and 2022 were directed by women,” Renzetti writes, citing a recent report by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. And only about 1 percent were “directed by women from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.” When women do tell stories, they are not taken as seriously. Polley, for instance, entered the U.S. numerous times to promote Women Talking, which explores enduring themes of truth and justice and received multiple honours, including an Academy Award. Unimpressed customs agents repeatedly made “snarky” comments about its title. In Boston, Polley asked one official who rolled his eyes if he would watch Sidney Lumet’s classic 12 Angry Men. He replied with a simple “Maybe.”

Women earn less than men, as has been reported widely, and many of the jobs they perform, like caring for children and elderly, disabled, and sick people, are unpaid. When women advocate for better working conditions and compensation, they are more likely to be frustrated in their demands than men. Quoting a senior lecturer from Harvard, Renzetti notes that they “run into more resistance” when they seek raises. Unlike men, women routinely work part-time when their children are small, which leads to lower earnings and to pensions, if they get them, that are smaller (in Canada, those pensions are 18 percent smaller than men’s). Women are more likely than men to live in poverty during retirement.

Aging women are seen as less desirable than older men — and younger women. Hair dye and Botox injections become a way of staying socially and culturally relevant in middle age. Worse, youthfulness matters for women’s job security, no matter how high one’s profile. As Renzetti grimly remarks, “The beloved CTV News anchor Lisa LaFlamme was terminated from her position at the age of fifty-eight, not long after letting her hair naturally silver.” Reflecting on LaFlamme’s termination, the CNN host John Berman recalled that his producer told him to dye his salt-and-pepper hair completely grey “so that I had more gravitas.” Renzetti’s outrage at these double standards is palpable.

Renzetti reveals glimpses of occasional tensions among women, as well: “In the United States, a group of female Republican legislators are some of the most extreme in politics, and the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump, the misogynistic, convicted sexual abuser who rules their party.” Yet she too often describes the sisterhood as universal, when the more difficult truth demands frank exploration. Take the 2020 death at a Quebec hospital of Joyce Echaquan, a thirty-seven-year-old Atikamekw woman: a clear case of sexist racism. The coroner concluded that Echaquan, who was misdiagnosed as suffering from drug withdrawal by the attending male physician, would not have died if she had been white. In her final hours, Echaquan heroically taped racist comments by care workers meant to support her. Yet Renzetti fails to note that these comments were made by women. For Echaquan, failures of humanity, not least of the sisterhood, were deadly.

There is a gulf between many of the harsh realities Renzetti describes and her hopeful epilogue. She concludes with a hagiographic celebration of Taylor Swift: “There’s no one like her. And yet, in the contradictions of her existence, she mirrors the women who adore her.” I am not so sure. Yes, Swift is wildly successful, but as Renzetti observes, she’s still subject to misogynistic hate. We can recognize the strength of the contemporary patriarchal backlash in that fact. We can also part ways with Renzetti’s uncritical adoration of Swift by recognizing that most women are not white American billionaires and vanishingly few have the personal wealth needed to insulate themselves from the practical consequences of misogynist slings and arrows.

In keeping with Renzetti’s commitments to systemic change and joy in the struggle, I would propose an alternative epilogue: For women’s equality and freedom, we require better pay for our work, especially the least well paid among us. We need the resources — time and money — required to tell our stories, especially those heard the least. The inherent dignity of our persons, especially of those who bear the brunt of racial inequality and violence, must be respected. When our hair turns grey and then white, we might ask what we have learned in our lifetimes, without pretending that our age always brings wisdom. We need to work toward solidarity, learning to listen carefully across our different histories and experiences. We can dance to Taylor Swift, but we must also celebrate the songs in our own hearts, supporting others to do the same. To repurpose another of Renzetti’s observations: women’s solidarity is now, as ever, “beautiful, and reachable, and radiantly important.”