Antonia Bernardin

The 30th book I read this year was Loud by Drew Afualo. Drew is a Tiktoker whose content is famous for dragging the not so nice men of the internet but she has since gone on to be involved in a few podcasts and bunch of other cool stuff. As someone who has enjoyed her content, the podcast side of it more so, I thought her book would be a great selection for my effort to read a little more non-fiction this year.

Brief summary

This book walks you through understanding your own biasses under the patriarchy, how it can impact your behaviour towards other women, mens behaviour towards you (and what you are willing to accept from them in turn), and how it can impact your self and your worldview. It’s essentially a guide on confronting the constraints women and feminine presenting people are put under in society, how to break free of them, plus it delves into how Drew kind of ended up being the internet warrior for women and how you can be more like that in small ways in your own life, if publicly calling out men on the internet isn’t your thing.

My thoughts

I was really curious about how Drew would take the content she makes online and turn that into a book but I was, perhaps unfairly, surprised at how thoughtfully and conscientiously these ideas were put on paper as a guide for other women and femmes. Having heard her speak in podcasts, I was aware Drew is very eloquent speaker on these topics, so I should have known this book would be good at handling these topics in a way that would be engaging in a social media era context. This book would very much work as an introduction to feminism and feminist ideas. In a time where younger men and women are diverging politically and where conservative ideas are in the spotlight – this book would serve as a perhaps slightly sneaky, more palatable introduction to these ideas. It definitely didn’t feel like vanity publishing for a big influencer / content creator.

As I’m a *smidge* older than the probably intended audience for this book, I feel like a lot of the things she addresses would have been helpful to a younger version of me. I have already done a lot of the internal work she talks about but I came about it the hard way through life experiences. I was the friend who acted the way Drew describes herself when she was at College, keeping my friends safe and calling out creepy behaviour when I saw it. I was the one who was ‘too picky’ and ‘too opinionated’. While I don’t know if Drew’s approach on social media to these men who feel far too comfortable acting a type of way on the internet where it’ll live forever is the right one, I was certainly enacting a live version of it in my early twenties.

Some parts of it I felt were useful to the current version of myself, like the body neutrality stuff but I spent most of the listen thinking how this might have impacted me had I heard it ages 16-20. Especially the sections about how to listen to your gut on what you are willing to accept in a partner’s behaviour and how to know when things are over the line of wrong (useful for past me as prevention, present me learned that the hard fucking way I promise you).

So, I think if you are interested in confronting some internal biases and dismantling the way growing up socialised as a girl or feminine presenting person might have impacted you but in a slightly more readable way, this might be a good book to try. It has her dry wit and plenty of funny moments, as well as poignant ones. So yeah, I’m glad I listened to this book, basically.